JR the Eastern Screech-Owl has lost virtually all of his head feathers at once, as often happens for his species. It allows you to see all the new feathers growing in, and you can look into his ear holes and see the dark thing inside, which is the side of his eyeball.
He is very itchy right now, so as a human imprint he wants us to scratch his head a lot (he would normally do this with his mate). His bill was also in serious need of trimming, so we just snipped the tip off and bit by bit, during the head rubs, we were able to file the sides of the tip (the photos were before the filing was finished.)
I believe the bill keeps growing. I don’t know if all birds are like this but I know it’s an issue for captive parrots. Luckily I’ve never had to trim any of my parrots because I make sure to give them plenty of things to chew on. I’d imagine that owls naturally keep their bills shorn with diet (bones) and foraging.
I hear our owl ambassador does *not *enjoy his being trimmed, so anyone that actually does presentations with him gets out of doing it so Elliott doesn’t start hating them too. He’s a pretty cranky bird in general, so all the things he doesn’t like get pawned off onto people he already doesn’t care for so he can actually have some staff to help him out.