Strix seloputo<\/em>) at Swiss Club Road used to bathe every morning if rain during the night had left puddles in the Turf Club Car Park.<\/p>\nNow why does an owl bathe? <\/p>\n
Like most non-aquatic birds, an owl takes a bath once in a while to clean its feathers. It usually stands in shallow water, either at the edge of a lake or stream and flaps its wings to splash water over the body. The bird may sometimes immerse its body in deeper water. Or even take a plunge bath \u2013 flying at a low angle and splashing briefly in the water.<\/p>\n
And after a bath the owl will vigorously shakes off the water from its body, preens its feathers and sometimes also dries itself in the sun. <\/p>\n
Preening will rearrange the barbs and barbules of the feathers. During preening, oil from the preen gland located at the base of the tail will help keep the feathers from becoming brittle. The oil is also believed to have fungicidal and bactericidal properties.<\/p>\n
Bathing may also help remove external parasites, mainly lice.<\/p>\n
Top image by Allan Teo, bottom image by Johnny Wee.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the last few weeks the resident juvenile Buffy Fish Owl (Ketupa ketupu) at Lower Peirce Reservoir had been regularly taking its bath in the shallows of the reservoir (left). It flew into the water either in the morning or in the evening, usually whenever it was hot and sunny. Did it bathe at night? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/besgroup.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/besgroup.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/besgroup.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/besgroup.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/besgroup.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/besgroup.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/besgroup.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/besgroup.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/besgroup.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/besgroup.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}