/trumpets and fanfare
Welcome, one and all, to the opening ceremonies of the 3rd Annual Owl of the Year!
They’ve delighted, educated, and entertained you for the last 12 months, and now we see which owls have captured your heart the most.
We’ve taken the top 16 from last year’s event and ranked them by their average scores. Previous winners, White Faced Owl and Saw Whet Owl are still the top of the game, but it is anything but certain who is going to come out on top this year.
Even with just these competitors, there are going to be some bitter matches in the early rounds. But it’s no free ride for the previous owls - they must compete against some looking for rematches and some newcomers to shake things up, and that is why we are here now!
Today I will be putting up 4 groups of 6 for you to vote on. The bottom 2 owls will be eliminated, and the winners of all groups will be ranked based on their final scores.
To vote is easy - just upvote any and all owls you like. Downvotes don’t count, so don’t try. I’ll leave this open for the week, ending sometime Saturday (I’ll be on vacation so I get to it when I can!) and then the official games will begin!
Good luck to all your favorites, and may the best owl win!
trumpets and fanfare
Hurray! Hurray!
Barking
This is a falcon pretending to be an owl. It doesn’t stand a chance in this competition.
Black and White
Barred
Chicuatli! (maybe…)
Backing this one and the barn owl if they get thrown in.
I’ll once again be backing my tecolomeh.
Barnie is already in at a very respectable 6th seed.
Barred just missed getting a free pass at 17th place last year, but I’m hoping it gets some love due to being a fugitive of the US gov right now.
I just saw there is a place, Tecolotlán, “the place of the owls”, which has a very crowded coat of arms, but is crested by one large owl.
This was the best image I could find of it, though it would be helpful to have a bigger one to see what all is going on here, it seemed they didn’t want to leave anything out of it! 😅
A fantastic find!
I can’t help but love a society that honors owls so much!
They honored them because they were afraid of them. Owls were considering portents and harbingers of death in a lot of Aboriginal American cultures.
They still get a lot of hate in many parts of the world from holding similar beliefs. Respecting them as an omen is one thing, but when they start hurting them to keep them away is something else.
I avoid sharing those stories usually because they’re usually real downers and I don’t know anything else really about the people still hating on owls. I don’t think they should be torturing or killing them, but I don’t want to be weighing in on random ethnic minorities, as I’m sure they get enough of that already.
Owls are a bit spooky if you don’t know what they are, but that has nothing to do with them, we’re just often afraid of the unknown and mysterious.
I don’t have any direct anecdotes about the killing of owls in Mixtec Pueblo culture. That being said I would not be surprised by such things. They had a tendency to sacrifice quite a few organisms.
If they killed owls for ritualistic purposes it’s not like they treated humans any better.
The traveling poet owl!
Pray, tell me, good squire…
Whoooo cooks for you? Whooo cooks for you all?
Ashy Faced
I feel that she squints at me jugmentally. Her color are beautiful as well but I want to see more that just a barn owl. I’m going to be very jugmental this year but so be it.
No more than just a Barn Owl?!
You would mistake these 2?!
☺️
After the jugement, the anger. This is like the barn owl’s strong but quick-tempered big brother.
You are too much! 😊
Oriental Bay
I cannot not vote for the only hibou in the round but I already have to vote for multiple owls at the time because the beautiful colors of the Spotted Wood and the Black and White are too beautiful to be ignore.
Is this still a hibou? The protrusions are part of the face, not a separate tuft of feathers, so they are not plumicorns.
From what I see, you would call this a Phodile calong. It was also named by a Parisian, so you may have a better ability to find what it would be properly called. Scientific name is Phodilus badius.
Spotted Wood
Woot! It’s þe event I most look forward to every year!
Thank you for all þe hard work you put into þis.
I love that you guys enjoy it so much!
My favorite time is when it starts, and my second favorite is when it ends 😄
You still looking to White Face retaking the title or you got your eyes on another?
I see you’ve lined þem up for a potential show-down þis year.
I’m going to try to focus on some of þe less frequent winners. WFS will always be my favorite, but I’ve been liking BFO and Spectacled þis year.
Will I have þe willpower, is þe question. Great line-up; I don’t recall of burrowing always make it into þe contest, but I’m glass þey’re here þis year.
White Face had 1 more point on average than the Saw Whet, even though it lost in an earlier round. It just lacked a few supporters on the day it needed them, or others like yourself still loved it, but decided to see another owl win overall.
Spectacled totally has a shot this year. The love it’s gotten this year is much greater than past years. It’s got good positioning, and a lot may depend on how people feel about Snowies this year.
Burrow Owl always seems to underperform here, while being popular perennially with the Internet at large. Maybe the bulk of Burrow fans are more meme community people than Superbowl people? I can never understand why they haven’t been in the finals.
All I can really say is check in every day starting next week to make sure you don’t miss the chance to vote! There’s usually a couple tiebreakers that could have used those last few votes.
Those are gonna be some tough choices. Last year’s winner was a bit of a surprise, though it definitely earned the title. I don’t have a clear favourite, yet, and it’s gonna be fun to see who’s gonna make it!
I feel Spectacled is both in a good bracket and has had a popularity surge here this year to have potential. Even without knowing who it will be pitted up against, it seems to have a recent and still ongoing boost of popularity.
I don’t know if it’s big enough to win against someone like Snowy, which it’d have to do eventually, but if we’re looking for a surprise winner like Saw Whet was, it could be the one.
Mainly I’ve enjoyed it didn’t go to the same owl both times, and I’m hoping we can get another new one. While I like almost all of them equally, that Snowy or Burrowing haven’t won so far has been a bit of a puzzle to me. Perhaps they’ve already enjoyed too much prior internet fame. Our community seems to enjoy the underdogs a bit, which is my theory on why White Faced Owl was popular until the end of last year’s games, so much so that it still ranked higher overall than the actual winner.
It’s always fun to see what you all decide to do 😄
Group B was pretty easy. This one’s more difficult to pick!
I don’t think many of us are used to elections where all the candidates are good. Our brains aren’t ready for that!
Go Milky Eagle!
Which one is that? Is it the barking owl?
Aww that’s just a little splash of milk there 😍
No Tawny Fish Owl? I’m devastated.
We have a Buffy Fish Owl. Not totally the same, but I find all 3 equally good looking.
I don’t usually get any requests, but I can put him in Group D and give him a shot since you caught me early enough. I still want to get C and D out tonight.
Right right right! My bad I must have missed it :P i’ll be happy to suppport any fish owl :)
You know what, Stuart? I LIKE YOU!
Burrow Owl didn’t do as well last year as I had expected. They are gonna need more Bill Srs and Jonny Wursters showing up this year to stay competitive.
