From Blackland Prairie Raptor Center
Today on Fix 'em Friday: one of the challenges of working with wildlife is that we don't always know the story behind what caused a bird to need rehabilitation. With this Eastern screech owl, we know exactly what happened. Notice the perfect imprint this owl left on the window after striking it. The imprint was caused by feather dust shaking loose from its feathers and onto the glass upon hitting it. Feather dust is created as the feather sheath keratin breaks down, a natural process.
Remember that birds often can't see window glass, instead seeing the reflection of the sky and believing it is a safe place to fly. Preventative deterrence measures include placing stickers, decals, tape or dots on the outside of the window, or marking the window with tempra paint or soap.
This owl is continuing to recover from a concussion and should be released soon!
I'm glad this little one is doing ok now! 😧
Aw poor Gilligan.
Y'ever walked into a glass door? Geez I felt dumb.
I walk into plenty of opaque objects! 😔
While I felt a little bad sharing this one, I thought the keratin dust was a neat fact~~oid~~, plus since the owl should be ok, I can say the mark is pretty badass looking. It's a great menacing owl face, and I would never want to clean that off my door!
Poor bird. That imprint is almost cartoonish, lol. Glad the lil dude’s going to be ok, though.
On an unrelated note, “factoids” are things commonly believed to be true, but actually aren’t. I guess you could say factoids are factoids!
Good to know! I always took it as just a small snippet of knowledge.
Agreed - I learned something :D