I might have finished this sooner had I not spent as much time watching owl videos online. Some of the more surprising facts about owls' particular evolutionary perch are their ears' asymetrical placement which help them to more precisely locate prey in three dimensions (Google: owl skull and look at their ear canals), the outsize proportion of ocular cones to rods which lends to night vision at the expense of sensitivity to color (an exception being the ultra violet end of the spectrum), their piercing, fixed-in-place, forward-facing eyes which furnish them with binocular vision and explain their heads' comical bobbings. Reading Dawkins' The Genetic Book of the Dead, a similar list could be written for any species.
More owl stuff:
The Hidden Life of Owls, Leigh Calvez, 2017
Owls of the Eastern Ice, Jonathan Slaght, 2020
Owl Research Institute [owlresearchinstitute.org], Denver Holt/Steve Hiro/Beth Mendelsohn