Birds of prey and owls Lesson 34 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 Birds of prey, also called raptors, hunt other animals with sharp eyes, hooked beaks and gripping feet with curved talons. 1 Each one has its own trick: a kestrel hangs over a motorway verge with its head perfectly still, a peregrine drops from a cathedral tower faster than any other animal, and an osprey dives feet first into a lake. 2 Owls are the night shift: soft fringed feathers make their flight silent, and the heart-shaped face of a barn owl is a dish that funnels sound into its ears. 3 Owls swallow mice whole and cough up the fur and bones as a pellet, which is why a class can rebuild a whole vole skeleton with tweezers. 4 Pictures get them wrong: an owl cannot turn its head all the way round, owls are not the cleverest birds, and a bald eagle is not bald at all. 5 Motorway verges are rarely mown, so they are full of voles; a kestrel flaps into the wind at the wind's own speed and keeps its head still to watch for voles, and it can see vole wee trails that shine in ultraviolet. 6 A peregrine falcon dives in a stoop at over 300 km/h, the fastest speed of any animal, and often nests on tall city buildings full of pigeons. 7 Eagles see details several times more sharply than people, and an eagle's eyes are about as big as a human's. 8 Owl wing feathers have comb-like front edges, soft fringes and a velvety surface that muffle the sound of flying. 9 An owl can turn its head about 270 degrees, three quarters of a circle, because its eyes are fixed tubes that cannot roll; it has 14 neck bones. 10 A barn owl's face funnels sound to ears set at different heights, so it can find a mouse in total darkness by sound alone. 12 Vultures ride thermals, columns of warm air rising from ground heated by the sun, so they soar most in the hot middle of the day, and glide for hours looking for dead animals; their strong stomach acid kills germs in rotting meat. 13 The bald eagle has a white-feathered head; its name comes from an old word, balde, meaning white, and young bald eagles are brown all over until about five years old. 14 An osprey dives feet first and grips slippery fish with spiky toe pads and an outer toe that swings back, two toes in front and two behind, and carries the fish head forward so it slips through the air. 15 Harris's hawks hunt in family groups, which is rare for birds of prey, and they are often trained by falconers. 16 The wise owl idea comes from ancient Greece, where the owl was the bird of Athena, goddess of wisdom; in puzzle tests crows and parrots do much better. ← previous Birds: feathers, wings, eggs and flightnext → Birds of every kind: penguins, ostriches, parrots, hummingbirds, songbirds, crows↑ back to Biology This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/34-birds-of-prey-and-owls/