While I can't speak to the exact purpose of the papilla other than to say - traction while perched, and other owls have this as well....I just learned about this program for reporting on dead or sick wildlife and thought I would pass it on!
http://www.whmn.org/wher/ You may wish to report this dead owl! Ann Donoghue Fort Collins On Wednesday, December 17, 2014 11:45:55 PM UTC-7, SeEtta wrote: > > I recently found a dead Western Screech-Owl that I believe had been hit > by a vehicle trying to fly across busy MacKenzie Ave on the eastern edge > of Canon City. It was not mangled so I took close-up photos on which I can > see what looks like papillae on the bottom of it's foot pads. I wonder if > anyone knows the purpose of those? I have previously found dead Northern > Pygmy-Owl but do not remember it having foot pads like this. I have > uploaded a few photos of it including of those feet onto my Birds and > Nature blog <http://birdsandnature.blogspot.com/>. > > SeEtta Moss > Canon City > http://BirdsAndNature.blogspot.com > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/518b5b86-f959-4a2b-82af-689e6342194e%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
