I think I'm ready to start getting Owl of the Year underway!
Last year went well, but between you guys' feedback and my own, this year will be mostly the same, but a few improvements.
First change is the competitors. Last year I picked every owl, but this year I'll let you choose! I'm hoping that makes a few early rounds more exciting, since they will all be the owls you want to see.
I'm keeping everyone who moved onto the second round in. These owls are:
- Barn
- Buffy Fish
- Morepork
- Little
- Snowy
- Short Eared
- Great Gray
- Flammulated
- Burrowing
- Elf
- Saw Whet
- White Faced Scops
- Sooty
- Blakiston Fish
- Northern Pygmy
- Eastern Screech
Everyone who got knocked out has to compete to stay in. Those will be competing here. I'll let this run for the week so everyone has time to vote.
I'll put the 16 from last year in this post, and next week I'll run 16 newcomers! Top 8 from each will go on to the tournament to face the 16 returning owls.
Rules are simple and the same as before: simply upvote which you like.
Vote for one or two, vote for all, vote for none, the choice is yours.
Downvotes do not count.
In the need of a tiebreaker, I defer to my SO's vote, so I have no way in much of anything as far as results go.
Second change, the prize. Last year, this was all pretty new, and it was originally going to be a purely symbolic prize, other than we changed the banner and icon to reflect the finalists and winner.
It ended up being very fun, and in the spirit of owl celebration, I made a cash contribution in c/Superbowl's name to my local owl rescue. I did this mainly because I was familiar with them and knew they were legit.
Now that we've been doing this for over a year and have seen over a hundred rescues I'm sure, I thought if you guys had any rescue story that has stuck out this year or if there's a name you feel you have seen a lot like (in no particular order) A Place Called Hope, Middle TN Raptor Center, the University of MN, The Raptor Trust, or anyone else, give them a shout out during any of these threads or message me, and I can have you guys vote who gets the prize this year.
I do not want any money from you, and I will never ask for it. If you like the work you see here, donate directly to the rescue or get them something from their wishlist. I'm still going to donate this year again to my local rehab because it made me happy. This prize will be in addition.
With all that out of the way, here are your first contests!
#superbowl #owloftheyear24
Eurasian Eagle Owl
My vote is for this guy. I visited a place in the Alps where these guys lived in the cliffs and some local family friends said to never leave your baby under 2 months unattended because the “Uhus” can still carry them at that age.
For all the things to fear as a new parent! 😐
Who knew? I was surprised
To be fair, I haven't come across any reliable stories about a hawk, owl, or eagle actually doing anything other than swooping a pet or child to guard their territory. They're all much bigger than their normal prey and don't much look like their normal prey.
Looking up the stats on the Powerful Owl for another reply, most raptors won't bother with anything over 20% of their body weight. PO is named so because it will take much larger arboreal mammals, but even then a car or newborn is still more than 100% body weight.
Yeah, it definitely seemed like a folk tale the way it was told. But it’s interesting that it exists at all.
Here’s a photo of the cliffs across the small valley if you’re curious!
That looks amazing! Where is that?
It’s taken from a small castle/museum in the Italian Alps called Brunnenburg. At the top of the cliff, you can barely see a larger castle called Schloss Tirol, they’ll both show up on Google maps if you search for it. It’s one of, if not the most beautiful places I’ve been and I keep going back
That is a beautiful setting for a castle indeed!
Another place added to my ever growing list of things I need to see. ☺️