Superbowl

I'm glad you enjoyed it! It's a lot of fun to do, and I love seeing you all take part.

I try to include some facts, and I did a bit in the opening rounds, but there's a couple issues with it.

The biggest problem is despite humanity's long knowledge of owls, we don't know all that much about most of them. Most owls hate people. Most of their activity is in the dark. They live in hard to reach places. Some migrate huge distances. They've historically been very difficult animals to learn about, and much of our knowledge about them has really only started becoming more than guesses within the last few decades.

It was only in the 1970s we finally learned how owls can hunt in the dark. Genetic testing is teaching us what owls are actually related, and there have been many surprises. People are training dogs to find owls since they can see (smell, more appropriately!) things we can't. Drones are letting us get to nest sites that would otherwise be impossible to see.

For some owls, literally all we know is they exist. If they are in really remote places with poor access, we are very lucky if we know what they eat or how they nest.

There are at least 250 species of owl, many with multiple subspecies, so that leaves many we haven't gotten around to really learning about. The more common ones we know of have a decent amount of facts available, but when they "compete" against one we don't know much about, I don't want to have unbalanced profiles, so I try to include an even amount.

I tried to at least give an approximate size comparison for everyone this time, and if they had any interesting dietary things I put that in. Other things we know are either just general things that apply to most owls, or things a bit more complicated and interesting that they need a full post to go over.

I treat Owl of the Year as basically a beauty contest. You learn their names, where they're from, and some basics likes and dislikes. It's to get people excited for another year of learning the deeper stuff.

With it just being me, it's hard to put out too much spontaneous things for 2 weeks straight. Most posts now I prepare a few weeks ahead of time now. With the close matches this year, many I had very little lede time on. There was also major issues in my real life that unexpectedly put my schedule out of order, which didn't help.

Part way through I did try to enhance things a bit with bigger pictures. It is sometimes hard to find quality pics of the rarer birds or there are old photos that had lower resolution, so I ran many through an upscaled to make them at least 1080p.

This is more info than you asked for, but I got carried away with behind the scenes things! Please don't take it as complaining!

I love running this and the positivity it brings, but it's really a marathon for me, and I'm mentally worn out by the time it's over. I enjoy talking about my thought process behind what I did, and I like taking everyone's suggestions into account. I just have to keep my goals in line with my available time I can devote to it.

But annnnnyway! Thank you for enjoying it! I hope you hang around and continue to learn great owl stuff. I have lots more Snowy pics, some attacks on eagles by owls, some more of the rare Latin American owls, some owls (real and fake) in Christmas trees, all kinds of good stuff!

They're always popular and only lost to the overall winner last year. They could very well meet again in the semi-finals. That one in the back is looking for some payback!

Absolute muppets! Hoping to see them in the finals against flammy.

I'm curious how much of last year's excitement the outsiders like Flammy, Buffy, and Sooty will show up again. There's a bunch of new competition, and I'm excited to see how much momentum they can get this time.

There seems to be much early love for Burrowing, which is a good sign for them.

Burrowing its way to victory!

Saw Whet is a solid choice. The owl of a thousand faces! They're all cute, but no two are the same.

With a little intervention of Lord Vetinari

I love the little Morepork (and I also feel hippos are the true king of beasts!) and at first I thought you were a bit crazy, but it really isn't in a bad spot to have some surprise success.

Little Owl beat it last year, but Little had to get past Milky EO first, and the Milky has been surprisingly popular this year. Morepork has a much more classic look that could win over the Milky's unique characteristics depending on people's moods that day.

I commend you on your unique choice!

I literally voted for the Morepork just cause of the name lmao

Owls have quite diverse diets. If it's meat and they can fly off with it, they'll generally eat it. Frogs, worms, butterflies, other birds up to turkeys, snakes, squirrels, rabbits, skunks, porcupines, fish, and some will pick at carrion as well, so there's not much they won't snack on.

The Powerful Owl didn't make it in this time, but it can take down things bigger than itself, which is very rare, as most raptors try to limit themselves to closer to prey 20% of their body weight. With Australia's bountiful list of fauna, they eat possums (different than the North American opossums), the giant flying fox bats, and young koalas. They're very impressive hunters!

Pics aren't too graphic, but I've hidden them to be polite.

PO w/ possum

PO w/ flying fox

PO w/ koala

Snowy is always going to be a good bet. Especially on the Internet, it's just too classic.

Barn Owl got taken out last year by another string newcomer, Buffy Fish Owl. I think it's in a strong position this year.

With these 2 as your picks, I think you're going to be happy with how many of these matches go, but you may be left with a hard decision near the end!

I'm a sucker for some nice plumicorns. There are some really good horned owls this year.

Buff Fronted is a really special looking owl and I'm glad it made it through the qualifier.

GHO vs Sooty is going to have me stressed all day. They're both do good!

Saw Whet would be a good winner. They're so darn cute.

As soon as I posted, I remembered that I forgot to include the hashtags! 😮‍💨

I appreciate all your work to really take advantage of all these federated platforms. You really seem to be trying to make the most of it all!

Snowy has possibly the best positioning IMO, but even so, there are a lot of unique challengers on that side of the bracket. There's some owls with some really cool gimmicks over there that could catch the Snowy off guard.

Last year showed me no owl, no matter how normally popular, can let its guard down. Some I thought would be untouchable went out in the first round.

That's what makes this exciting though!

Oh my, I love that owl, but it's one of the hardest to get pictures of because it does not live in a very accessible place. There will likely be some of the same pics from last year if it goes past the first round, but I will do my best!

The "sky tiger" is tough to beat. A little smaller than a Snowy, so not the biggest North American owl, but it's one heck of a tough and beautiful bird. With the classic hoot, it's the first owl that comes to mind for many people.

My neighborhood also belongs to a GHO, so I'm a bit partial to them myself. I always smile when I hear it secretly watching over us.