This week I had the pleasure of joining my two young nephews at their school as it hosted an educational session on raptors. The two boys (pictured below) are crazy about wildlife (which I love) so they were super excited. I wish I could have photographed these amazing creatures in the wild, but it was very interesting listening to the information about them. Here's a couple cool facts I learned:

1. The reason most owls tend to have that bowl shape in their face is actually to catch as many sound waves as they can, which is the primary way they hunt in the dark--by listening. 

2. Owls tilt their heads while catching sound waves so they can level out their ears (which are asymmetrically placed on their heads) and then triangulate the position of the animal making the sound. 

3. Hawks can dive so fast (about 230 mph) that they can actually knock-out fairly large pray as they crash into them at a g-force of about 25 g. They also see 8 times better than we do.

4. The reason birds poop so much is because they have to stay as light weight as possible. Maybe I should try that. 

5. A golden eagle can have a wing span of 6 feet, break your arm with its feet, and gouge a chunk of your skin out with it's beak. It's a killing machine.

Now if I could only get some shots of them in the wild...