Trivia: What bird has the best sense of hearing? The Barn Owl's ear openings are directed forward and are shielded beneath downy feathers within the owl's familiar facial disk. (The ear tufts of some owls have nothing to do with hearing.) The facial disk itself serves to focus sound waves into the ears. Strangely, the ear opening on the right is higher than the one on the left. Each ear therefore receives a sound from a slightly different angle. This provides owls 3-D hearing in addition to 3-D seeing, thus doing us humans one better. Experiments have shown this sense to be so effective that Barn Owls can locate prey in total darkness by hearing alone. Barn Owls, sometimes called "Monkeyfaced" owls because of their heart-shaped faces, are strictly nocturnal. As their name suggests, they commonly select man-made structures in which to live: silos, water tanks, church towers and barns are favored sites. They are 14 to 20 inches tall with a wing-span of 40 to 45 inches. Their color is tawny or golden above and white or pale cinnamon below. They have long, broad wings and are graceful and somewhat moth-like in flight. Barn Owls do not hoot, but are very vocal nevertheless. Their various sounds include hissing, screeching, beak snapping, and a cry best described as a maniacal shriek. These owls breed throughout California and in some areas are fairly common. Birds of prey, owls along with hawks, eagles and falcons, consitute a group called "raptors" whose members are distinguished because they have talons (sharp claws) on their feet for catching prey and hooked beaks for tearing it apart. Owls, however, are only distantly related to their daytime counterparts. They are more closely related to other nighttime (nocturnal) birds like whip-poor-wills.
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