It really adds that air of credibility. Most owls have that bristley moustache, which is a good start, but a bushy white beard adds that authenticity of being a wise one of the outdoors. It's not the look of an owl that follows trends, but rather the confidence to be one's self and pursues their own truth and experiences. 😊
From Cape Coral Friends of Wildlife
Check out the winners below, and there are 8 more honorable mention winners at the non-social.media hosted link above!
Adult Winners:
1st Place – Conrad Peloquin
2nd Place – Damon Bell
3rd Place – Robert K. Brinley
Youth Winners:
1st Place – Adalynn Miller
2nd Place – August Lambert
3rd Place – Josh Pilon
From Wild Eye Wanderer
Pair of Mottled Wood Owl
Kumbhargaon, Maharashtra |
Feb'25
Bonus pic!
From Vishal Lokare
Two souls, one perch-honoring the power of togetherness
Shot on Nikon Z8 with 200-500 mm
Pune Maharashtra India
Feb 2025
That is amazing! Animals know what they like!
I've gone on a bunch of cave tours, and I've frequently heard many caves were discovered by cows, as air coming from the openings provided them natural air conditioning!
Shorties always look so amazing. You may not get cool cape flapping noises if it's made out of silent feathers though! +1 stealth 😁
Aww, you edited it.
He does run with the herd more than I'd prefer, but that's just how he is.
I'd vote for Joe Bison for president. Love his initiative.
Lol, couldn't find that, but I did see this one:
I love me some corvids. I've built up my relationships with my local clan of Jays from when I was WFH, and we have a bunch of them in the clinic now, along with a crow and a raven.
They're all wonderful, but I'm still biased toward the owls and raptors.
No matter which Scops I pull out of the bag, it's always going to look amazing!
Looking at this photo again, it's as if it selected a tree painted with a mural of itself. 😁
It's not the size of the brain, it's how you use it! 🤪
All libraries should have a guardian owl of some sort!
A watchful barn owl, from a vantage point on a fence post, scours his surroundings on the lookout for prey in Croydon, south London. Photograph: Tomos Brangwyn
From The Guardian
It is dusk, a short walk from the big Ikea in Croydon, and a barn owl is emerging from its nest to hunt. In the fading light, the male owl sits on a fence post to survey the rough grass below. He has a busy evening ahead: he is responsible for feeding a roosting female for the next few weeks while she cares for their chicks. The owl hops to another fence post. Suddenly, he dives into the grass below, emerging a minute later with an unlucky rodent, and flies back into the nest.
“I still get really excited,” says Tomos Brangwyn, a local enthusiast who monitors the site, lowering his binoculars. “He’ll do that most of the night. It’s a great sign that there’s a female in there that we haven’t seen for a while, as she’s on the eggs,” he says.
The scrubland is surrounded by urban sprawl. Police sirens and souped-up cars roar past, and industrial buildings hum under harsh security lights nearby. Central London is less than 10 miles (16km) away, but the barn owls here are unperturbed, feasting on the same diet of voles, rats, mice and other small animals as their country cousins. This patch of land has supported as many as three breeding pairs in recent years.
Owl sightings have risen sharply in the capital, monitoring data shows, with Londoners increasingly seeing the birds in green areas and back gardens. There were just 25 barn owl sightings in 2010, but 347 spotted a decade later.
A barn owl goes hunting at night in the Croydon area. City birds will enjoy the same diet of voles, rats, mice and other small animals as their country cousins. Photograph: Tomos Brangwyn
“People might not think owls are in London. But they don’t realise how wild the city actually is,” says Becky Garden, a partnership officer for Greenspace Information for Greater London CIC (GiGL), which records environmental data for the capital.
All of the UK’s owl species – the tawny, barn, short-eared, long-eared and little – can be found in the capital at various points of the year. The shy, nocturnal hunters can be hard to monitor, with almost no reliable population surveys performed for many years. Sighting data is considered a measure of presence, rather than of population size, as it may also be driven by the rise of popular citizen science apps and awareness campaigns such as the Owl Prowl run by London Wildlife Trust. But most Londoners are probably not far away from an owl, even if they never see them, says Garden. “Records of owls in London have increased quite a lot from about 2016,” she says.
Tawny owls – known for the “twit twoo” duet sung by males and females to each other – are found in green areas throughout the capital, nesting in hollow tree species and even known to prey on green parakeets. Reports of sightings have increased from 159 in 2010 to 894 in 2020.
Short- and long-eared owls are infrequent winter visitors. Little owls are found in larger parks, similar to barn owls. But barn owls have also been spotted in Notting Hill, Deptford and other places that were probably one-off visits. The birds sometimes surprise Londoners: last month, journalist Ash Sarkar posted a photo of one in north London on social media under the tagline “Wtf is a barn owl doing in Tottenham???”.
A captured barn owl has its data recorded – the species has experienced a significant recovery in recent years. Photograph: Tomos Brangwyn
The apparent resurgence of the barn owl reflects broader national trends, with the species experiencing a significant recovery in recent years. The last thorough survey in the mid-90s estimated the population to be about 4,000 breeding pairs in the UK, but the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) believes it may now exceed 10,000. It is no longer listed as a threatened species in the UK, benefiting from a rollout of barn owl boxes and sufficient habitat to hunt rodents. But the overall owl population is not as healthy.
“With the exception of the barn owl, they are all not doing brilliantly. There’s a bit of a decline across the board. It is most pronounced in the little owl, that seems to be having a really tough time of it, linked to insect decline,” says Jon Carter from the BTO. “But barn owls have turned a bit of a corner. They are doing really, really well.”
The owls are reasonably common in large gardens, town parks and city areas, Carter says. “Wherever you live, if you’ve got bit of leafy stuff around, odds are there are going to be owls nearby,” he says. “Because they sleep all day long and are as quiet as anything at night when they’re flying around hunting, people just don’t really notice them unless they’re right outside the window hooting away.”
I will say, I posted an AskLemmy asking about people's favorite items of clothing and someone said the Cuddl Duds fleece pants. I was in need of some new pajama type bottoms, and I love my Cuddl Duds (not a sponsor) flannel sheets, so I was all, let's try the pants.
If the owl is as happy with its fuzzy legs as I was during the cool months in those pants, that's one happy and snug owl!