BBC Natural World · PBS Nova
Super Powered Owls
Known as Owl Power on PBS Nova. Luna and Lily, from the egg.
The film
A film that followed two barn owls from hatching, and then put owl flight under laboratory conditions.
Super Powered Owls went out on BBC Natural World here, and as Owl Power on PBS Nova in the United States. It has travelled further than almost anything else we have been part of, and people still write to us about it.
Rose and I are in it throughout. We raised Luna and Lily from hatching, and the film follows them growing up — first feathers, first flights, and everything that goes with that.
Alongside that, the production ran a series of experiments to show what an owl can actually do. None of that works without birds that are completely settled around cameras, lights and people, and that comes from the way they are raised.
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Clips from the film
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The experiment
How quiet is quiet?
It sounds like a simple question and it is not. Everybody knows an owl is quiet. The film set out to show how quiet, and against what.
Three birds were flown over a bank of very sensitive microphones — a pigeon, a peregrine falcon, and a barn owl called Kensa — and what each one did to the air was recorded.
The pigeon was the loudest by a distance. A heavy body on short wings has to beat hard and often, and every beat came through as a spike on the trace.
The falcon is built for speed rather than stealth. Bigger wings, far more pace — and at that pace you hear it cut through the air.
Kensa barely registered. On the trace there was almost nothing to see at all.
Barn owl.
Why
How a barn owl gets away with it
Four things, working together.
A comb along the front edge. The leading edge of the wing carries a row of stiff little serrations. They break the oncoming air into much smaller eddies before it can build into the turbulence that makes the noise.
A velvet surface. The feathers are covered in a soft pile that soaks up the higher frequencies — including the sound of feathers moving over one another.
A soft fringe at the back. The trailing edge is ragged rather than a hard line, so the air leaves the wing gradually instead of all at once. No whoosh.
A great deal of wing under very little bird. She is light for the size of her wings, so she needs very few beats to stay up — and a beat you do not make is a sound you do not make.
Put together, it means an owl can hear a mouse over the sound of her own flight. The mouse hears nothing at all.
The birds
Luna and Lily
Luna and Lily came to us as chicks, and that is where the film starts. You see them at the age in the photograph here, and then you watch them become flying birds.
Raising a bird from that age is the whole basis of how we work. It is why they will fly to camera in real time, at full speed, and why they are calm with a crew around them. You cannot arrive at that later.
Lily is still working today. She hunts by ear and flies to a beeper, which as far as we know makes her unique among captive barn owls — almost every other one flies by sight.
Luna and Lily as chicks, with Rose and Lloyd. Photograph © John Waters.
At a glance
Behind it
Raised from hatching
Both owls were with us from the egg. That relationship is what makes close, calm filming possible.
Science on screen
The experiments were built around what the birds genuinely do — not around what would look good.
Reach
Broadcast in the UK and the United States, and still one of the most watched things we have been part of.
Contact
Lloyd Buck
lloyd@lloydbuck.co.uk
077603 90917
Jo Sarsby Personal Management
talks@josarsby.com
Talks and personal appearances
Where we are
North Somerset, United Kingdom.
We travel worldwide for filming.