A very burning question for many subscribers is: “Where does an owl go to the toilet?” Answer: "Down."
Many believe that birds cannot "endure" to the "pot". In fact, they can. For example, my goshawk Silva does when a hood (a special cap that covers a raptor's eyes) is put on her. If she wears the hood only for a short time (no more than an hour and a half), then she will wait until the hood is removed. This is very convenient, as we can travel on the entire Moscow metro without getting dirty anywhere (if this happens, then I have to clean up after the bird, yes).
In short, birds can hold back their innermost for a short time.
But birds are birds. The whole anatomy and physiology of birds (even non-flying ones) are evolved in a way that the bird weighs as little as possible, making it easier to fly. Therefore, before moving (flying or running), the bird discards the "ballast" - all the excess weight. And this is the accumulated "poop".
Experienced keepers of birds of prey can easily predict when, at what point and in what place the bird will empty itself.
As for owls, more often than not, tend to poop where they are sitting at. That is, down the perch. Each owl will definitely have several places where they like to sit most of the time. And it is under these places that there will be poop. When pooping, the owl raises its tail, so as not to stain the pride of itself and not to get dirty, but try to shake it away. If the owl sits on a flat surface, then it backs away, poops, returns to where it was originally sitting at, or carries on its business.
Of course, all this is conditional. There are many embarrassing situations when droppings finds themselves in mugs, on the head, on the ceiling, in the keyboard and passport, but all this is equated to natural disasters and go under the heading of "no one is to blame, it is natural."
To teach a bird to go to the toilet in a certain place is not realistic. I heard that some people manage to teach parrots to fly around the room only after they have pooped in the cage, but parrots are a completely separate topic. (Note from translator: owls have much smaller brains than many other birds due to their huge eyes taking up almost all the space in their heads and therefore are impossible to train, while parrots have large brains in comparison.)
The droppings of a healthy owl smells of almost nothing. They do smell a little bit however if you put your nose close to them. If the droppings are smelly, it means the bird is unhealthy and you should bring it to a vet. But about 1 time per day or two days, owls can give out a brown poop of a uniform consistency with a nasty smell that looks like cat poop. This is the actual "faeces", which is normal. It must be removed as quickly as possible due to the smell. Most often the owl does it at night. In my case, this means that Yoll is emptying them on the street.
In the video, I am showing you the state of my room after my approximately 14-hour absence. All this was cleaned up in 5 minutes. The main thing is to lay newspapers everywhere.