Human fascination with the mysterious owl goes back 30,000 years to the earliest cave paintings. Sad to say, most owls actually fall into the lower range of bird intelligence. However, they still deserve plaudits for a different reason -- their amazingly sharp senses.

The owl's enormous eyes deliver excellent stereoscopic vision even in very dim light. Unlike human eyeballs, they are fixed tubes that cannot be moved except by turning the head. The pupils can dilate or constrict over a wide range -- giving the bird good vision during night or day.

Even more remarkable is the owl's keen hearing. The ear-tufts you see are strictly ornemental. However, the owl has large external ears buried in the feathers on each side of its head that can accurately locate a sound by comparing its sharpness and the fractions of a millisecond delay between the two sides. Because the ears are located at different heights, the owl can also judge the vertical elevation of a sound.

Combined with almost silent flight, the owl's vision and hearing make it a perfectly adapted predator for small nocturnal animals in the forest environment. After digestion, the bird regurgitates "owl pellets" -- macabre mixtures of the tiny bones from previous meals. One species of burrowing owl collects animal dung to use as bait for attracting tasty beetles -- suggesting some Owls might be smart enough to use tools.

Nevertheless, most owls are dimwits. The screech owl pictured above accidently blundered into my car one snowy Christmas Eve and briefly knocked itself unconscious. This photo shows it sitting inside the trunk of my car a short time later, looking rather discombobulated. Fortunately it soon recovered enough to fly silently away to resume its night-time duties. Since these owls can live 15 years, it may be catching a mouse somewhere in Tennessee even as you read these words.