365 Photo Project - April

This month has been a great month for photos with the start of spring, vacation and work trips and just generally being out and about.  It is so hard to choose photos to use for this project, but at the same time it is a lot of fun. 

I have recently joined a website call 365.  Here is the link to my page.  This website is so much fun if you love photography from around the world.  I can follow other people and people can follow me.  Everyone can comment back and forth.  It’s like social media for photography.

 Clipper butterfly photographed at the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House

My first favorite photo for this month is a photo of a Clipper butterfly which I took at the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House in St. Louis.  The light and the colors just came out fantastic and I just love this photo.  I went to the butterfly house with a WBS volunteer and friend Sandra Murray who also loves taking photos.  We spent her lunch hour photographing butterflies and enjoying the hot, humid conditions in the butterfly house.

This was also the start of March Morpho Month at the Butterfly House.  For this special exhibit they release an extra 2000 Morpho butterflies which are free to fly around the interior of the Butterfly House.  It is just amazing!  I took a ton of photos that I really like, but this one of the Clipper just came out fantastic.

 Our new baby Barn Owl--who now has a name....Minerva

My second favorite photo is one that on the 365 Project site made the “popular page” for several days.  It is a photo of the World Bird Sanctuary Education Department’s new baby barn owl.  One night she was home with me getting some socializing time and I took this photo of her sitting on my pink/orange blanket.  With all of her fluff she looks just adorable.

I am loving this project and since I joined this website, I'm loving it even more.  Seeing other photos from around the world and reading other’s comments just makes sharing the photos even more fun and enjoyable.  This also gives me so many more ideas on places to look for that next photo. 

Submitted by Cathy Spahn, World Bird Sanctuary Naturalist

Barn Owl Chick Feathers

Around this time of year, I get a chance to see barn owl chicks up close in the World Bird Sanctuary’s propagation department. 

  Barn Owl chick at 1 week -- at this stage the feather follicles are very visible

Barn Owl chicks hatch with every feature perfectly formed--just on a very small scale.  Their closed eyes are surrounded by the beginnings of little facial discs.  Each foot is covered with impossibly small, yet perfect scales, and each toe is tipped with a sharp little talon.  Along the length of pink, nearly transparent skin covering their bodies, are rows of very active little feather follicles.

Barn Owl chick - 2 weeks old - showing the beginnings of its fluffy white down 

When I first saw a barn owl chick, I was surprised to see that its body was not entirely covered with feathers, as I thought a bird’s body must be.  Instead, it appears that the little bird is wearing a pinstripe suit with pink and white fluffy stripes.  The feather follicles form only along certain regions.  The gaps of bare skin in between the follicles are called apteria.  Birds can raise their feathers to allow air to circulate along the apteria.  This helps the birds keep cool, which is crucial considering that birds have one of the highest metabolic rates of any animal on earth.

  Barn Owl chicks at 3 weeks - covered in its insulating layer of down

When the owlet hatches, it is covered in a fine, natal down.  Soon, this stringy down is replaced with fluffy white down.  The growth of this layer of down is readily visible from day to day, and is nature’s best insulating material.  I wonder if the early down feathers that the young chicks grow resembles the integumentary feathers found on some fossil dinosaur species, such as Sinosauropteryx prima, a small theropod discovered in the Yixian Formation in China.

Barn Owl chicks at 7 weeks - still in down but already beginning to develop its wing feathers  

Could the development of feathers in an individual bird’s life somehow mirror the development of feathers on a much larger time scale?  I don’t know, but when I watch the barn owlets, I see something very primitive, intricate, and beautiful develop right before my eyes.  Every aspect of the owl, from its behavior as an adult education bird, to the development of its first feathers provides me with an endless source for questions and a deep sense of appreciation for the complexity of life on earth.

Submitted by Leah Sainz, World Bird Sanctuary Naturalist/Trainer

Haiku - Baby Barn Owl

The third in a series of Haikus by our talented Education Coordinator, Laura MacLeod, celebrating the many amazing attributes of the birds she works with on a daily basis.

Fluffy, curious

Exploring the great big world,

Learning, growing, wild

Submitted by Laura MacLeod, World Bird Sanctuary Education Coordinator