Hi John and all,
All animals will give eye-shine when spotlit at night. The shine is created
by the retina "reflecting" the light source back at you. Eye-shine is
routinely used to find animals at night time, in particular mammals, frogs
and birds, but even tiny little spiders will give fantastic eye-shine!
Animals with excellent night vision give better eye-shine than diurnal
animals (due to the comparatively larger pupil, which allows more light to
enter in dim conditions), and if you hold the light source at your own eye
level you will see the eye-shine much more clearly. This is why some people
(myself included) prefer headlamps for initially spotting an animal ,and
then using a more powerful spotlight to illuminate the animal.
On this note, one should never shine a spot light directly at a nocturnal
animal. Use red cellophane taped over the light source and shine the light
slightly to one side, so as not to mess up the poor critters night vision.
Cheers,
Beth Symonds
Brisbane
On 9/16/07, John Tongue <> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> We just spot-lighted (spot-lit?) a pair of Boobook Owls in a tree in
> our Caravan Park in St. Helen's, Tas. They were getting very
> amourous, with quite a variety of little chattering, mewing calls.
> What we noticed, though, was the brightness of the eye-shine. I
> didn't realise they had eye-shine. I've heard that Nightjars do, but
> thought that was pretty unique among birds. Do other Owls have eye-
> shine, too?
>
> John Tongue
> Ulverstone (usually), Tas.
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> birding-aus.blogspot.com
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