"turning the facts of owls' existence to suit their own needs, fears and desires"

And last we come to that charming old idea about the great wisdom possessed by owls. Charming it is, true it is not. Owls are the highly efficient predators they are not because their intelligence is particularly well developed, but because their senses are so keen. Indeed, their remarkable senses of vision and hearing may have prevented owls from developing a high degree of intelligence; they can hunt quite successfully without it. Birds that do seem to exhibit a high degree of intelligence, birds such as crows and parrots, are social, and they need to be reasonably bright to function well in a group. Owls almost never associate with other owls outside of the family group, so they don't need complex social skills. Then where did the idea that owls are the epitome of wisdom come from? Much of this idea can be attributed to owls' appearance and behavior. We have said that owls look like little people; aren't people wise? Owls must be short and stubby philosophers, clothed in a scholar's robe of feathers. Owls also seem to be dignified birds who tend to sit quietly, and they do give the impression of being deep in thought. What they are actually doing, impressions aside, is sitting still so they'll blend in with their surroundings and escape detection. Owls have marvelous, tree-colored feathers that camouflage them perfectly - as long as they don't move. People, of course, have put their own interpretation on this behavior, as in this anonymous poem:

A wise old owl sat in an oak,
The more he saw the less he spoke,
The less he spoke the more he heard,
Why can't we all be like that wise old bird.

In Navaho Indian legend Nayenezgani, the creator, made the first owl, telling it: "...in days to come men will listen to your voice to know what will be their future." In tales from a wide variety of cultures, owls are judges, sages, gurus and prophets. So firmly entrenched is the association of owls with wisdom that the birds are used in modern-day advertising to project this image. And yet it's still an image, albeit an appealing one. In fact, very little about owls' unnatural, people-created history squares with their natural history. For millennia people have been twisting and turning the facts of owls' existence to suit their own needs, fears and desires. None of this has touched the real ones, the masters of darkness, who continue their ancient quest for prey and leave the philosophizing to us.

…from:
The Most Fantastical of Fowls: The Myth and Reality of Owls