100 Days Project

Did you know – owls have three eyelids?

Yes, they have three eyelids (per eye).

They have a normal upper lid that closes downwards when the owl blinks, a lower lid that closes upwards when the owl is asleep and a third translucent eyelid that closes diagonally across the eye to moisten and protect it while maintaining vision.

This third eyelid is called a nictitating membrane and can be seen in the left hand side eye of this Spotted Eagle Owl.

201012-001-164_PAWW-DC-ZZ000-P — Spotted Eagle Owl (Bubo africanus) with nictitating membrane (left hand side eye) in mid blink.

This photo was taken at Eagle Encounters at the Spier wine farm outside Stellenbosh, Western Cape, South Africa.

A comprehensive owl website; the Owl Pages.

(#1 of 100)

Over the next 100 days I will post an interesting fact relating to the subject of one of our photos on a daily basis.

Back Story:

Earlier in the year, our staff intranet drew attention to the 100 days project.

In essence, it is about choosing one creative exercise, and then repeating it every day for 100 days. I did not pay much attention to it at the time.

Some weeks ago we suffered a hard drive failure here at home (yes, I managed to recover everything). As I worked through a review of my backup process and hundreds of archived photographs the connection was made and I thought I’ll give it a shot.

Here then follows 100 (or so) interesting (at least to me) facts relating to the subject of some of our photos.