Northern White-Faced Owl
by Mitch Shindelbower
Title
Northern White-Faced Owl
Artist
Mitch Shindelbower
Medium
Photograph
Description
The northern white-faced owl (Ptilopsis leucotis) is a species of owl in the family Strigidae. The southern white-faced owl (P. granti) was formerly included in this species and the two were known as the white-faced scops-owl.
It is found in a band across Africa between the Sahara and the Equator. It occurs in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo and Uganda.
The owl has a rather notable defense mechanism. When faced with a predator (like another owl slightly larger than it) the bird flares its wings to appear larger. When faced with something much larger than itself, it pulls its feathers inwards, elongates its body, and narrows its eyes to thin slits. It is thought that it uses this ability to camouflage itself,[1][2] and it shares the ability with relatives like the African scops owl.[3]
Many different types of owls have some ability to adopt a "concealing posture", also known by the German word Tarnstellung,[4] in which they squeeze and thin their body to look like a broken tree branch, and some types may also narrow their eyes to slits and fold a wing sideways across their chest in a Dracula-like manner to hide the lighter-colored feathers on their underparts.[5] Such behavior has also been documented in Eastern screech owls in a natural setting reacting to threats [6]
Uploaded
March 7th, 2018
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Viewed 874 Times - Last Visitor from New York, NY on 04/18/2024 at 1:03 PM
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Comments (20)
Luther Fine Art
Congratulations on your wonderful artwork being featured in Camera Art! You are invited to archive your work in the Features Archive thread! group as well as any other thread in which it would fit! ! LF
Rosalie Scanlon
Wonderful capture Mitch, such a beautiful Owl. Nice on the black background. L/tweet.
Don Columbus
Congratulations Mitch, your work is Featured in "A Birding Group - Wings"! I invite you to place it in the group's "2018 Featured Image Archive" Discussion!! L/Tweet