Owls are hard to study — night, silence, no interest in being watched — so most of what people believed about them was folklore. Ackerman goes out with the researchers finally cracking it. Feathers with a comb on the leading edge that break up turbulence so the bird arrives without a sound. Ears set at different heights so the world arrives in stereo top to bottom. Faces shaped as dishes to funnel noise. She sits with people banding saw-whets on migration routes nobody knew existed, follows burrowing owls living in prairie dog towns, and gets into why so many cultures decided this particular bird meant death.
What an Owl Knows