Owl - The Silent Flier

You might not have noticed the difference but scientists did! A group of scientists carried out an experiment to scientifically notice the phenomenon of an owl's flight. A comparison is carried out between three different birds namely a pigeon, a peregrine falcon and finally the main participant a barn owl. And to be noted the results are significant!

Video Credits: BBC Earth

BBC Earth

That was pretty good comparative flight. Did you hear anything while the barn owl flew? No, nothing at all, Absolutely quiet. It's amazing. But what have the microphones picked up? The decibel waveform show the sound being generated by the birds in flight. Each spike is an individual wing beat. 

But with the barn owl... there's almost nothing. Even their array of super sensitive microphones failed to pick up any sound of Kenza (barn owl's) in flight. Nothing. Nothing at all. They even played it again. There wasn't a sound.That is really impressive, isn't it? Yeah. It shows that they really are silent fliers.

So, how does a bar now fly so silently?

When air moves, it generates sound. The more movement, the greater the sound. The pigeon's large body and small wings mean it can't stay airborne without a lot of fast flapping. This creates turbulence in the feathers below. The Peregrine (Eagle) has much larger wings, which it uses to build up speed and chase down its prey. The barn owl is far more graceful. Kenza's (Barn owl's) large wings and small body make it easier for her to generate lift.So, just one gentle wing beat sees her gliding effortlessly through the air... creating little more than a whisper in the feathers below.

The Secret of being Stealthy

Owl is an ambush hunter. What makes her so deadly? She’s not the fastest, but she has a different advantage. It's stealth, not speed that makes her lethal. Compare this owl to a falcon. Both animals are birds of prey. But they have really different strategies when it comes to hunting. The falcon hunts when it's light out. He’s incredibly fast. Some falcons fly up to 200 miles per hour. They don’t need to be quiet. By the time their prey hears them it’s already too late.But owls have another strategy.

Video Credits: Deep Look

They hunt under the cover of darkness. They’re sneaky. She has incredibly powerful night-vision. And she can zero in on the location of even the smallest noise. Air rushes over her wings as she flies. In most birds, that’s noisy. But with owls, there’s almost no flapping sound, no rustling.It’s... quiet. Up close, you can see how she does it. Her feathers are velvety, soft.That furriness lets the feathers slip quietly past each other during flight… dampen sound like a soft blanket.Compare that to a falcon feathers.They’re sleek and aerodynamic, but noisy as they slice through the air.And here’s another thing.See those projections along the leading edge of the owl’s wing... like a pointy comb?Those break up the wind as it flows over the top of the wing. The feathers at the trailing edge of the wing break up the wind even more.

Compared to a falcon, these feathers look kind of jagged, right?But that jaggedness means almost no whooshing sound that would alert their prey. And overall... owl wings are bigger, wider than a pointy falcon wing.So they’re slower, but they have more lift.The owl doesn’t need to flap them as often. Less flapping means… less noise.We often fear what’s fast. Speed and danger seem to go hand in hand.But owls have given up on racing through the day to become champions of sneaking through the night.

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