The mysterious Crested Owl crushed the barn owl with a Caribbean tan, the Ashy Faced Owl. The Crested lets its trademark brows do all the talking. Otherwise this owl hasn’t shared many secrets with us.
On the other end of today’s matchup, we have quite the opposite of mysterious. The Screech Owl, specifically the Eastern Screech we’ve been looking at, is one of the best known owls. This little horned owl is probably the best gateway for someone getting into the wild world of owls. It’s small, it’s cute even when it’s grumpy, it has a beautiful voice, it comes in 3 distinct colors (red is usually the real crowd pleaser), they’re plentiful, they’re plumicorned, and I could just go on and on about their virtues.
Does the dark allure of Central American jungle call to you? Are extreme eyebrows a things you never knew you desired? Upvote that Crested.
Maybe you’ve spent your youth chasing those wild owls your parents warned you about and you’re ready to appreciate that owl next door that’s always been just across the yard. You like that fancy White Faced Owl, but can’t afford an African expedition? Screech Owl has almost all the perks of that guy, but without needing to travel halfway around the world. If you want that classic loveable owl, a scops owl like the Eastern Screech is hard to pass up. Give Screech your upvote now if it’s the one for you.
Screech
I mean, just look at those eyes.
I think they’re fabulous, and bit just because they’re the ones I’ve spent the most time with! There’s just so round and cute and make the most precious little noises! 😍
Crested
Snowy vs Long Eared, unfortunately for me, went as expected. It got respectable support though, and it never felt impossible, but it never got a last minute surge to pull ahead.
Snowy will go on to meet the tropical Black and White. To me there seems an obvious favorite, but I’ve been wrong about a lot in this year’s games!
Very curious to see how Boreal fares today, and also Morepork and Little tomorrow. Those are the potential disrupters we have left from the look of things. Morepork is coming in with the highest votes, and Little was a bit of a standout too.
I expected it too, but also wanted the long ear to triumph. Maybe so campaigning over the next year for my long and short eared companions will help them out for next time.
None surpassio the Asio?
Don’t be weird, support the Eared?
For Harry! Screeeeech!
❤️
What do you do in case of a tie? I can’t decide, they are all so superb.
Thank you for doing the owl of the year, you’re clearly putting a lot of effort, I’m learning so much!
I typically use my partner as a tiebreaker. We usually get one or two.
I like when the results are closer, so I spent a bit of time introducing the matchmaking. A lot of people, myself included, have been surprised by Matt of the results this year. I’m a little frustrated most of my favs have lost, but I’d rather that than having matches be predictable.
I’m so happy I can still teach you guys new things! After almost 3000 posts, I thought I would have long ago run out of things to talk about, but these are really fascinating animals. Either that or you all would get tired of me!
This year’s stuff feels like it’s taking longer. I used to think it was about half an hour a day I’d spend prepping the next day’s matches, but this year, some have been closer to 2 hours since we’ve got some rare owls in this one.
It’s always a ton of work, but you all love it, it really bumps us up in commu rankings, and hopefully grabs us a handful of new people for our group.
If you’ve ever got any questions, feel free to ask. I can talk about these guys all day!
Pls never stop posting, there is always more to learn, and I’m eager to know as much about owls as you, even though it will probably take me years to reach your level haha. I can listen to you talk about these guys all day. At this point I’m trying to be able to distinguish the different owl species so ooty is perfect for practicing. Thank you again for doing that in your time off.
The best resource for species ID is something like this, where you can A/B them relatively simply.
They’re grouped by genus, so you can compare the ones most closely related and learn to spot the differences quickly, rather than comparing 2 random owls.
It also makes it nice for if you find one owl you like, you can find other similar ones.
I came into this knowing just about 6 owl types. Then it was just sharing a fact or two that I read to keep this community alive. Then I went to 2 posts a day, to 3, and eventually 5 I think was my max, but I had to cut it back some this year. It was really just a “fake it until you make it” thing. I don’t have any formal training, but now after a year of working in a wildlife rehab, I have been debating it. I attended a conference last weekend and really loved all I learned there and meeting some of the people I’ve featured here.
It’s tricky, because it is a magical career, but there’s no money in it, no days off because animals don’t get days off, a lot of seeing animal cruelty and performing euthanasia, and so on. So I’m trying to find a path with more and more hands on while not getting completely sucked into the full “this is what I am now” thing.
I’m getting asked to do an open house presentation and also to mentor new clinic volunteers, so my opportunities are still growing. For someone who both loves animals and endless learning of new knowledge, this has been an amazing path Lemmy has sent me on.
If you want to learn, start posting. Don’t feel you’re in competition with me, just share things you find that you like. People will ask questions, and see if you can find the answer. Or see if there is a wildlife clinic or raptor rehab near you. There was no real qualifications for me to join. I just needed a background check since the Ed Center has kids come in, and a quick interview to make sure I wasn’t some wierdo and had realistic expectations on what was and wasn’t involved with being a volunteer. I see my place has even refined it this year to get newbies into a more focused path of what types of animals (or even jobs where you help the animals but don’t have to handle them at all) so people can do more of what they want and less what they don’t.
But whatever you do, just keep at it and you will learn so much. I’m here to support anyone who wants to go further, and this community as a whole has been amazing to me on my journey getting to this point.
Thank you for your input, this is amazing info also on your personal owl-conaisseur-development.
Of course! We all start with zero knowledge about everything, and at some point in life we often forget that. We may never become experts on all the things we enjoy, I’ve been trying to make music for 20 years now and still consider myself a novice, but we can still enjoy new things even if we never reach the level of expertise we envy. Trying something and never getting good is still often more fun than never trying!
This is another back and forth battle!
28-29 currently, so tense!
29-29, someone tried to be sneaky and downvote Crested, so it may not show if you dont have downvotes shown.
Crested owl lost!? I’m devastated! It was clearly superiour to the screech owl.
The eye brows are captivating, but the screech has a certain something something
Definitly. We need to rally people to vote for it. Saw whet is great I’m not saying otherwhise but it is time for a change. And who better that a owl with two colors during its lifetime?
I really do want a change of final 4, and maybe the winner. Screech deserves that on merit not just for the upset value of course though.
It still have every chance. If just one people would vote for it!
It was a very back and forth contest! I had no clue who was going to win. I was team Screech though, so I have no complaints 😁
