Silent Wings, Banded Owls: teacher key

Great Horned Owls, grade 10 edition, written for 10th grade. Studies of owl wings, owl necks, owl pellets and banded owls show how a great horned owl flies quietly, turns its head, finds food and stays near home.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. According to the Audubon account, what do the comb and fringe of owl wing feathers do?
   • Funnel air smoothly over the wing and dampen the sound (answer)
   • Keep the eggs warm
   • Make the owl glow
2. What did the 2013 Johns Hopkins study find about owl neck vertebrae?
   • All 14 are the same as in people
   • Twelve of the 14 cervical vertebrae have a special adaptation for protecting blood vessels (answer)
   • Owls have no neck bones
3. In the banding studies, how many banded great horned owls were recovered within 48 miles (80 km) of where they were banded?
   • Almost none
   • About half
   • Most (93 percent) (answer)
4. What did the 2005 pellet study find from feather and hair remains?
   • Three species of birds (answer)
   • Only reptiles
   • No birds
5. Great horned owls nest in borrowed hawk and heron nests in Vermont. What does that show about the nests?
   • Herons live in owl nests only
   • The owls do not build every nest they use (answer)
   • The owls build all their own nests
6. What do scientists say much of what we know about how long birds live comes from?
   • Pellet counts
   • Nest height
   • Banding data (answer)

Words

• regurgitated: coughed up
• cervical: of the neck
• vertebrae: neck bones
• banding: tagging with rings
• territory: claimed area