For owls that are superb.
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If you find an injured owl:
Note your exact location so the owl can be released back where it came from. Contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitation specialist to get correct advice and immediate assistance.
Minimize stress for the owl. If you can catch it, toss a towel or sweater over it and get it in a cardboard box or pet carrier. It should have room to be comfortable but not so much it can panic and injure itself. If you can’t catch it, keep people and animals away until help can come.
Do not give food or water! If you feed them the wrong thing or give them water improperly, you can accidentally kill them. It can also cause problems if they require anesthesia once help arrives, complicating procedures and costing valuable time.
If it is a baby owl, and it looks safe and uninjured, leave it be. Time on the ground is part of their growing up. They can fly to some extent and climb trees. If animals or people are nearby, put it up on a branch so it’s safe. If it’s injured, follow the above advice.
For more detailed help, see the OwlPages Rescue page.
From Blackland Prairie Raptor Center
Nose Job? This Eastern Screech Owl came to our Rehab Center with some blood above its cere. The cere is a waxy fleshy covering above a bird's beak just below the eyes, where the nostrils (nares) are located. The owl is patiently sitting while our staff cleans the cere.
I don't know. My knowledge stems from my biology classes at school and what my parents told me. And that was some time ago. :) I didn't know the word cere, so I looked it up and found the UV part about owls and felt the urge to share it. I didn't look into that study until now.
I'd like to know more too, but I don't think I have the energy to pull through if I'd dive into that rabbit hole. So I won't try. :)
The authors state: Rods are responsible for the gray scale scotopic vision under low light conditions - so grey scale brightness, only. The cones are not relevant because it is too dark. Or are they? There are those oily cones which maybe can detect UV light? If so: still no colors, just brightness. To me it looks like the authors of the study offered some educated guesses.
I would say it means: Either it is greyscale brightness but maybe it is something else. But the authors don't know. They just know that the owl perceived the difference.
It looks like the owl's eyeball doesn't absorb the upper range of UV-light (350nm+) so it could reach the owls receptor cells: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/224/20/jeb243129/272645/Lens-and-cornea-limit-UV-vision-of-birds-a
I didn't find anything about that secondary (beta) peak that I could understand - maybe it is about the biochemistry in the rod/cone which can be split into phases when light hits the cell. I'm lost here. The google-LLM pointed me here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3265844/ I'm not even sure, if this is a match for our context.
Lol sorry, I knew I should have been more specific I was just questioning in general, not asking you specifically to answer! 😁
At least we sound like we've understood it in pretty similar ways.
No worries. I wouldn't have looked into it, if I wasn't interested.:)