The first of five clues. Each one below gives a little more away.
I cannot move my eyes at all, so I move my whole head instead.
The front edge of my feather is frayed on purpose, and it is why you never hear me coming.
My ears sit at different heights, which lets me hear in three dimensions.
I can turn my head about two hundred and seventy degrees.
The night bird that says hoo.
Owl
The leading edge of the flight feather is combed into a fringe that breaks up the air rushing over it. It costs a little speed and buys almost complete silence.
The eyes are tubes rather than spheres, which gathers more light but leaves no room to swivel, so the neck compensates — fourteen vertebrae instead of our seven, plus arteries and blood reservoirs arranged so that turning two hundred and seventy degrees does not cut off the brain's supply. Many species have ears set at different heights, so a sound arrives at each at a slightly different moment and can be located vertically as well as horizontally. Silence comes from the feathers: a comb-like fringe on the leading edge breaks up the turbulence that would otherwise be audible.
Reading five clues at once is not the game. In the real thing they arrive one at a time and every wrong guess costs an hour. Play mystery #51 · today's mystery · the vault
Previous: mystery #50. Next: mystery #52. Or try #34, #35, #36, #37, #38, #39.