They have 4 toes per footsie, but the outer back one can swing up front to trick you. Or they can tuck a foot up in their floof. They are sneaky! 😄

It’s at its rebellious state of growing up.

They just want to know who’s hoo, so they’ll get a splash of color when they’re housed together. We track weights on all our patients to make sure everyone is eating right, or that one may require some type of specific care, so they’ll mark that one so they’re being consistent with tracking and treatment.

If they’re similar in size/shape/color, especially with something like an owl that can shrink/stretch, or puff out its feathers, it removes any question which owl it is you’re observing.

I haven’t seen any birds dyed at my place yet, but for the squirrels where we had up to 6 in the same house, they each got a dab of nail polish on the outside of the right ear. It’s usually pretty distinct, though they used purple and black (blended into the fur sometimes if they were darker ears) and blue and green (the shades they had were a bit too similar for me, esp when they started to flake off) and it let us know as soon as we grabbed them if they were eating, pooping, had lice, had aggression, etc so we were ready to double check or deal with anything specific.

With the birdies, the head is a good place to mark them because those feathers don’t have as much function as most of the other visible spots, like flight or tail feathers.

No smoke and mirror tricks here, just pure owl opulence!