Owls Are Not Wise

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Owls Aren’t Wise & Bats Aren’t Blind: A Naturalist Debunks Our Favorite Fallacies About Wildlife by Warner Shedd, with illustratins by Trudy Nicholson, is a pretty good book on fallacies in nature, things people believe that are not true. I.e., that owls are wise or that bats are blind.

Did you know that porcupines throw quills at you when they are upset? If you did, then you knew something wrong and you better get this book.

I’m writing a major thing on fallacies, and I will be mining a few examples from this book.

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4 thoughts on “Owls Are Not Wise”

Owls may not be wise, but they are cool. I’ve seen two recently in one of my favorite “hiking woods”.

Not so many bats in near my house, but our local nature center has a good healthy group (flock? settling? what is the name for a large number of bats in one location?) in two of its barns.

You may not see them, but owls sure have ways of letting you know who whose territory you’re squatting on. They hoot down your chimney in the middle of the night, whitewash your sidewalk, and leave decapitated bunnies in your bushes.

Bats too, always zooming around the street lights.

Although now that I think about it, maybe it’s just my Republican neighbors…

COLLECTIVE NOUNS FOR BATS FROM FACTS.CO
colony- A colony of bats
(‘colony’ refers to a large group of bats roosting together)
cloud- A cloud of bats
(‘cloud’ refers to a large group of bats flying together)
cauldron-A cauldron of bats
hanger-A hanger of bats
(‘hanger’ refers to a large group of bats roosting in a cave)

dean says:

November 14, 2017 at 10:57 am

As I remember watching bats stream from our barns on the farm where I grew up “cloud of bats” is amazingly descriptive.

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4 thoughts on “Owls Are Not Wise”

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