Nature Done Wright

The N.Y. Times has a nifty story on owls today. Here's a sample:

"In the Western imagination, the owl surely vies with the penguin for the
position of My Favorite Bird. 'Everyone loves owls,' said David J. Bohaska,
a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural
History, who discovered one of the earliest owl fossils. 'Even
mammalogists love owls'

"Owls are a staple of children’s books and cultural kitsch — here wooing pussycats in pea-green boats and delivering mail to the Harry Potter
crew, there raising a dubiously Wise eyebrow in the service of snack
food.

"Yet for all this apparent familiarity, only lately have scientists
begun to understand the birds in any detail, and to puzzle out the
subtleties of behavior, biology and sensory prowess that set them apart
from all other avian tribes."

The link is here.