Nature Scenes with Lynn Bowen: Ears an interesting part of birds' anatomy

BEACON PHOTO/LYNN BOWEN
In addition to fantastic eyes, owls have unique, wonderful ears, but they are hidden! This is a little screech owl who is recuperating from an injury at a rehabilitator's aviary in Glenwood.

By Lynn Bowen
BEACON COLUMNIST

posted Aug 1, 2009 - 9:44:26am

Avian hearing is much more sensitive than ours. Birds can hear a wider range of sounds, but have fairly specialized hearing ranges. Some hear higher pitches, while others hear lower ones, depending upon what nature gave them.

Birds hear differently than people also. For instance, people hear relative pitch, which can be a tone in one octave, and but they still know the tune in a different octave. Birds cannot do this!

A bird has a small hole on each side of its head for ears that are covered with "auricular feathers." These feathers protect the ear opening, reflect sounds, and funnel sounds toward the opening. We all know what high winds do to a microphone outdoors, but this excess noise isn't a problem for birds, since the special feathers cut down on wind noise.

In case you ever wondered, the "horns" on the horned owl are only ornamental, and the little holes on the sides of its head are the real ears. In fact, most owls have asymmetrical ears, which means one ear is high and the other is low, making their hearing even more acute than that of birds with symmetrical ears. Sounds from a single source reach owls' ears at slightly different times, making the accuracy of locating prey very precise. A barn owl can capture a mouse in total darkness based on sound alone! Nocturnal birds have the best-developed hearing.

Woodpeckers can actually hear grubs moving below tree bark. Another piece of ear trivia is that pigeons can detect the extremely low-frequency rumbling that often precedes earthquakes, since they hear lower pitches than people.

Another interesting fact about birds' ears is that large birds that don't fly, like ostriches, have large ear openings without feathers to cover them. But birds that are underwater a lot have small ear openings that in some cases can be closed.

These are a few basic facts to know to pass Bird Anatomy 101!

— Bowen lives in DeLand. Send e-mail to abowen27@cfl.rr.com.

— abowen27@cfl.rr.com.

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