I meant of these pics of the Boreal and the Hawk, but that answer is perfectly good too.

Bonus points for the Spotted Wood Owl, I love that one so much! The day it didn’t qualify in the Owl of the Year bracket I was very disappointed. Shamefully underrated here, alongside my precious Long Eared Owls.

Which of the 2 types is your favorite?

I’m not LGBT myself, but while in my angsty and edge lordy early 20s, my LGBT friends didn’t really like the ICP music, but they strongly preferred the messaging over the early Eminem of the same era.

There is (was?) a lot of violent imagery that not nice people could fixate on, but the targets of that violence are all racists or authoritarians of one kind or another. Beyond that, a lot of the music was about just doing what makes you happy and chilling with your friends with some slightly veiled Charlie Brown level Christian values mixed in.

Every Juggalo I’ve met has definitely been a little out there, but not in a bad way, just a marches to the beat of their own drummer type.

That’s right! 😆

“We got this guy out front, says he ordered 3 Boreals, but we only got 2 on the shelf.”

“Just give 'em a Hawk Owl. He’ll never know the difference… It’s a little bit bigger anyway for the same price.”

I came across a shot of one trying to catch a duck yesterday. It didn’t succeed, but some of them seem to have impressive appetites. Shorter photographers, beware!

I’m not sure how much it is individual feathers. I’m picturing clusters of various sizes, like a plumicorns section, maybe some facial disc sections. With the contour feathers that give them their overall shape, you can really see the end result when they either fluff or tighten in defensive postures, or just when they’re trapping warm air when it’s cold.

It’s something I’m always keeping an eye out for more data on. Even if it’s pretty basic, it’s still a cool trait, and if it’s more extreme, there’s got to be done near reasons for it.

Great point. I wouldn’t be surprised if they made them function at least somewhat to that effect.

I was just discussing tonight with my girlfriend who’s an X-ray tech as I was looking at an X-ray of a Long Ear with a broken wing about how I’m always amazed so much of an owl is just feathers with such little actual owl holding it all together.

Like, I just feel a wing needs to be more fleshy to work. It doesn’t look like that but of muscle to that amount of wing wind be able to do anything.

But it is really neat to get to see all that structure from a different angle we didn’t normally see in that picture. It’s stuff like that which keeps me still amazed after looking at so many of these pics. I don’t know how many I look at for every one I share here, maybe 8-10 to 1, and the amount of things I feel I still haven’t seen blows me away.

They are the end results of millions of years of evolution prioritizing speed, strength, and stealth.

They are simply elegant and have to be strongly assertive to survive.

They have a spark of danger while we’re not living in competition with them, or for most of us, we’re not in any danger from them.

They share a number of qualities of things most humans would be attracted to aesthetically.

They’re the pro athletes of the animal world.

If you picked an animal to come back as if you were reincarnated, would you want to be a rabbit or a cow when you could be an eagle or a shark?

Most aren’t killing for fun (looking at you, house cats!), they’re just doing what is required of them to survive. It’s a brutal world for all wild animals, from the single celled to a whale. A predator is no worse than anything else trying to make it to the next tomorrow.

Hey! I resemble this remark! 😓

He may have a stinky name, but he seems to be a swell guy!

Owls need reminders to work on saying their thank yous better. 😁

Oh man, that art style takes me back!

I think this has to be part of the reason most aren’t communal!

I’m sure the other owls are going to have so kinds of great nicknames for Archy on his return to the forest.