Owls

Great idea! I love owls.

Does anyone else get annoyed watching Harry Potter when you can hear Hedwig’s wings flapping? I can’t remember which movie it is (although it might be more than one).

Yes, I want to paint one of our small owls like this “transformer owl” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCgbYnNAbSM 😆
Anyone know what species this is?

Owls do fly silently. It drove me berserk in the Harry Potter movies when they went flap-flap-flap. (Except in the Great Hall, then I could convince myself it was the mail they were carrying rustling, not the wings, lol.)

It’s not the number of feathers; it’s the fact that owl feathers are softer, especially around the edges, so they flex instead of cutting through the air. I docented at the Birmingham Zoo for several years (i.e. talked to people and school groups about animals, in the zoo and in general) and in the education stuff there was a pair of preserved wings, one from an owl and one from a duck. It was very easy to feel the difference between the feathers on the wings and when I ‘flapped’ them, the duck went whisss, and the owl went . Not a sound. Besides, we had several families of screech owls nest in my yard growing up, and when they got territorial the first thing you knew about it was when you got a headful of claws. Never a whisper of sound to warn you they were there.

I have always heard is that owls fly silently which makes them very effective hunters. It is a pet peeve of mine when movies get basic animal facts wrong. My niece who is 22 now still remembers when I took her to see Andre the Seal when she was 7 or 8. The poor kid had to listen to a 10 minute diatribe about how they used a sea lion and not a seal to play Andre. And since I did it coming out of the theater evidently I really embarrassed her. 😳 The funny one is the time I was watching Stuart Little with some friends and ranted about how they had the teeth of the mice completely wrong. So my friend, Pat, looks at me and says “But the fact that he is speaking is ok?” XDHa ha! Yes!Oh boy ! Incorrect animal details in cartoons! One of my favorite subjects!
Did you ever notice the doves in “Snow White ” that drank water by lifting their heads? All types of birds do that… except doves and pigeons. This is an understandible mistake though.
There was a kind-of “educational” kid detective cartoon show once that had the kids on an adventure in South America. They befriended a couple of llamas who gave them rides… but the llamas were drawn with horns like big horn sheep!! Heehee!
Then there are all the cartoon rabbits that have pink toe pads…
I don’t mind that they all can talk, the birds have teeth, or that cartoon characters can can blow up a balloon and float away with it, or be shot repeatedly with a gun. That sort of stuff makes perfect sense!