We had a fantastic time today at the Scottish Owl Centre at Polkemmet Park.  We went there as part of our topic on ‘Nocturnal Animals’  There were so many different owls to see we could not believe it ! What did we do ?

First of all, we met two special owls, Alba and Lily.  Alba was a Barn Owl and Lily was a Little Owl.  We played a game called ‘Hoot’s for Dinner ?’  We had to choose food items from a bucket including worms, baby birds and mice and then had to decide which owl which eat which food.  We really enjoyed this game and did very well using our prior knowledge remembering that Barn Owls eat mice and little birds and Little Owls eat insects.

After this game we then explored the centre seeing lots of different species of owls including : Great Horned Owls, Tawny Owls, Eagle Owls, more Barn Owls, Little Owls and Snowy Owls and lots, lots more.  Some were sleeping when we were there so we had to be careful not to wake them.

We then went into the big barn where we met two more owls, a Tawny Owl and an Eagle Owl.  We learnt that Tawny owls are the only owls that make the twit -twoo sound.  It was great to see it fly around the barn and swooping silently.  The second owl , the Eagle Owl was much larger than the Tawny Owl.  We were told that it was 22 years old and very friendly. It was lovely too !  We did really well all day listening and learning new things.  Thank you to our lovely helpers for coming along today to help us.

What have we have learnt today ?

If an owl has orange eyes that means that it awake during the day – James H.

There are 279 different owls in the world – Alfie.

There are over 100 owls in the owl centre – Joshua.

The Tawny Owl is the owl that says Twit -Twoo – Chloe.

The boy Snowy Owl was white and the girl one was Black and White – Matthew P.

When an owl has black eyes it means it is nocturnal – Isabella P.