In 2023, Elf beat Powerful, but then lost to Burrowing. Saw Whet beat Ural, but lost to White Faced Scops.

In 2024, Elf lost to Long Ear, while Saw Whet beat Barred, Buffy, Great Horned, and White Faced Scops in a very impressive road to victory.

Nice ID! I’m glad to hear the things here make an impression. You are now the owl expert of your household! With owl power comes owl responsibility.

The Owl-Father and King of Owlsgard!

He’s one tough cookie. Can’t let a little thing like that keep him down! 😉

Honestly, as someone who largely disliked social media and was typically a lurking doomscroller that was ready to quit social media altogether at the reddit app ban, what made the best change ever was becoming someone who is primarily a poster.

I post what I want, when I want, and I get to start the conversation that way. It’s always a topic I want to talk about, and it’s something there isn’t much to argue about, and all the interactions will be 99% positive.

It’s a small crowd here, so you can get people that are ready to talk with whoever reaches out to the masses first.

You can take time replying to people, and if no one is talking at the moment, it gives you time to plan a next post.

Pick a topic you enjoy and make yourself our local expert. That prompts you to keep actively learning about something you enjoy too so you can answer people’s questions they ask you.

Definitely guilty of something… 🤔

I can’t believe I forgot Burrow Owl yesterday when mentioning most expressive owl faces! 😮. They should absolutely be on there!

So the article doesn’t cover Mesoamerican areas which is weird that they’ll use the term “Native American” and have the term stop applying past the Rio Grande.

I didn’t read much into it at first, as that seems “normal” if they were a US based org, so I went to look up who they are (were), and it turns out they were a Koch funded climate change denial group!

Who Is the Environmental Literacy Council?

I won’t go into it more than that to not derail the actual decent talk coming out of this. It is part of the reason I normally don’t talk about this topic though. There are many cultures who have negative associations with owls, different African and Indian (as in the country of India) people will kill owls due to beliefs of them being bad, and while I don’t believe killing them is right, I didn’t have enough cultural awareness to speak much about it in a way fair to the people so I just shut up usually.

From all I’ve seen of the Meso American owl content, that feels more reverent rather than negative, but that’s why I was hoping you were around, both to represent some of the other American beliefs, and because you have undoubtedly better cultural context than I do, so I didn’t want to mess anything up if you were available to comment instead.

Being able to call you in for this made me feel like I have some special insider to call in for the situation like when they call in some obscure expert on Pawn Stars or the like. “Let me call my Meso American owl expert to see what they say!” 😆

who was said to be (unlike Anon6789) a malevolent shapeshifter being possessed by the more sinister spirits and forces of the cosmos.

Yeah, I am much more chaotic neutral. 😉

Late Night with the Devil is a really neat and scary recent movie, and it packs more owl symbolism per hour than anything else I can think of. I recommend it!

There is at least some differentiation in some cultures. I’ve talked to @MisterNeon@lemmy.world before about different owls from Meso American codices. Modern Mexican Spanish still has a number of regional words for different types of owls. Búho, lechuza, tecolote, and I’m sure there are more that are less common.

La Lechuza is a Mexican shape shifting witch.

Mictlantecuhtli., Aztec god of the dead, was associated with the mythical owl chicuatli.

It is very helpful that they don’t weigh all that much. It is like if you threw a baseball, a tennis ball, and a balloon at something. The baseball has more mass, and would hit pretty hard, the tennis ball would hit solidly, but nothing like the impact of the baseball, and even throwing the balloon is rather challenging, let alone hitting anything with force.

Even though this one may lack the feathers and strength to fly, it looks old enough to at least have been practicing the proper movements. They do exercise flying the way a baby will crawl and then try holding itself up in preparation to walk, so it may have been able to additionally show itself down a bit.

I enjoy seeing the variations people come up with, even for more traditional owl names. Oliver vs Owliver is a popular one, along with Otis vs Otus, as Otus was their original genus name until it got split up. The genus division debate was still going on from 1850-2003, so there are still many Screeches named a variation of Otis even though it is no longer considered correct taxonomy.

Quit frackin’ up my hunting grounds!

Can’t charge a sitting OotY! We found a memo from 50 years ago! 🤪

I think they’re right up there with the Snowy and the Buffy Fish Owl for most expressive owl faces.

He’s had a loooong week…