Snowy owls clearly demonstrate evolution’s power to sculpt life to fit environment. Under their thick outer feathering is a dense layer of down, which allows them to maintain an internal temperature of 100 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, even when the air temperature is 70 below. The heaviest of North American owls, snowies can be nearly pure white in color.
(Females are always darker than males, and have white feathers barred with dark brown.) The light coloration provides camouflage when the owls are perched on snow or on sand. And while other owls are nocturnal, snowies are active both night and day — an adaptation that makes perfect sense, given that daylight is continuous within the Arctic Circle during much of the summer nesting season.
Snowy owl like other owls, snowies have eyes that are fixed in their sockets. In order to see all around, they have extra vertebrae in their necks that permit them to rotate their heads up to 270 degrees in either direction (but not all the way around, as some once thought). The sight of one of these silent white hunters, sitting atop a fencepost and swiveling its head and huge yellow eyes toward you, is one you won’t soon forget.
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