I think I’m ready to start getting Owl of the Year underway!

Last year went well, but between you guys’ feedback and my own, this year will be mostly the same, but a few improvements.

First change is the competitors. Last year I picked every owl, but this year I’ll let you choose! I’m hoping that makes a few early rounds more exciting, since they will all be the owls you want to see.

I’m keeping everyone who moved onto the second round in. These owls are:

  • Barn
  • Buffy Fish
  • Morepork
  • Little
  • Snowy
  • Short Eared
  • Great Gray
  • Flammulated
  • Burrowing
  • Elf
  • Saw Whet
  • White Faced Scops
  • Sooty
  • Blakiston Fish
  • Northern Pygmy
  • Eastern Screech

Everyone who got knocked out has to compete to stay in. Those will be competing here. I’ll let this run for the week so everyone has time to vote.

I’ll put the 16 from last year in this post, and next week I’ll run 16 newcomers! Top 8 from each will go on to the tournament to face the 16 returning owls.

Rules are simple and the same as before: simply upvote which you like.

Vote for one or two, vote for all, vote for none, the choice is yours.

Downvotes do not count.

In the need of a tiebreaker, I defer to my SO’s vote, so I have no way in much of anything as far as results go.

Second change, the prize. Last year, this was all pretty new, and it was originally going to be a purely symbolic prize, other than we changed the banner and icon to reflect the finalists and winner.

It ended up being very fun, and in the spirit of owl celebration, I made a cash contribution in c/Superbowl’s name to my local owl rescue. I did this mainly because I was familiar with them and knew they were legit.

Now that we’ve been doing this for over a year and have seen over a hundred rescues I’m sure, I thought if you guys had any rescue story that has stuck out this year or if there’s a name you feel you have seen a lot like (in no particular order) A Place Called Hope, Middle TN Raptor Center, the University of MN, The Raptor Trust, or anyone else, give them a shout out during any of these threads or message me, and I can have you guys vote who gets the prize this year.

I do not want any money from you, and I will never ask for it. If you like the work you see here, donate directly to the rescue or get them something from their wishlist. I’m still going to donate this year again to my local rehab because it made me happy. This prize will be in addition.

With all that out of the way, here are your first contests!

#superbowl #owloftheyear24

  • Pseudo@sharkey.world
    0·
    5 天前

    @[email protected] Unfortunalety the edit has not fediverse to Sharkey. That’s common but if you add it from the start next time, it will not be a problem. I will respond to this post with a comment with the hashtag so they are added. Thanks for alway working so hard 😊

  • pseudo@jlai.lu
    0·
    5 天前

    I did not understood the part when you explained what would be different. Sorry but would you explain it again? I not familiar with english vocabulary for tournament…

    • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      5 天前

      Change 1:

      Last year I had chosen all the starting owls.

      Those that won the first round are in the opening round for this year by default.

      This post has the owls that lost Round 1 last year. The top 8 in this post will be added to this year’s tournament and get a second chance. The bottom 8 are not popular enough to be competitive.

      There will be another post like this next week with 16 new owls that were not in the game at all last year. Same rules for that round. Top 8 fill out the last 8 spots.

      So this year’s game will consist of:

      • 16 owls that won at least 1 round last year
      • 8 that lost right away last year but now get another chance in case they just got a difficult pairing, such as an unfamiliar owl vs a very popular one.
      • 8 brand new owls (I’ve got some very new and unique ones that haven’t even been posted about before!)

      The goal is to try to make all the rounds more competitive and have less one-sided first round matches. You guys have already picked the most popular ones, so there are none that don’t have at least a decent amount of fans.

      Change 2:

      Last year, I made a surprise donation to my own local animal rescue on behalf of Superbowl. I got an owl plaque put up in the wall of donors and they got a cash donation.

      Post Link

      This year, if there were any rescue stories that really touched your heart or if one group stood out to you as doing the most good, you can nominate they get a donation on behalf of our community. I will pay for it, you guys just decide where you want it to go.

      Other than that, it’s still just upvote who you like best, most votes wins, just like before.

  • pseudo@jlai.lu
    0·
    5 天前

    TL; NR (yet) but I’m super exited to play. May I suggest that you add hashtag to your post so it can gain visibility on the twittoverse as well. #superbowl #owloftheyear24

    • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      5 天前

      I did it. I assume I did it correctly as it changed the font style when it updated. 😅

      Let me know if I did it right or wrong, I don’t know how all these things work.

    • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      5 天前

      I think most of the fun comes from having the difficult choices.

      A few people chimed in last year that we shouldn’t be pitting them against each other, that it’s not a competition and we should love them all equal, etc.

      That’s the whole point of the contest! They’re all great, so how does one choose?! It’s a challenge for us, not for the birds, they’re just pictures.

      I hope you enjoy the rest of the contest, and I look forward to hearing about everyone’s difficult decisions! It’s a ton of work for me, but at least I don’t have to decide anything once I have the bracket made, then it’s up to you!

    • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      5 天前

      I’m somewhat actually looking into that now. I’m getting married next year, and we were discussing an owl couple cake topper.

      There are people that make them for a living and there are quite an array of styles out of different materials like wood, resin, and 3D printing.

      Based on current research, one not as fancy as the trophy rendering is going for $200 for a 5x7 inch figure.

      This has me also looking at cheap vintage owl figures that don’t weigh a ton! 😅

      Seems a good side hustle for someone with useful artistic skills.

      I made the image with ArtBot, which is my go to for quick but decent AI images. I think this prompt was just “simplified but realistic owl trophy gold and dark wood.”

      I would have liked just 2 toes forward on each foot, but they can have 3 forward if they want, so I called this good enough.

    • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      5 天前

      Thankfully she comes from a very long line of strongly opinionated people! 😆

      I think there were 2 ties last year, but neither was a tough decision for her. She knows she’s the tiebreaker though, and takes the responsibility with the utmost sincerity! She’s the one that really kickstarted my interest in owls after all.

  • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
    0·
    5 天前

    I try to stay impartial during things, but it was shocking seeing Great Horned and Eagle knocked out in the first rounds last year.

    I’m curious to see if they do better this year.

    There’s also a ton of great new owls coming next round, some of which I don’t think I’ve even had a chance to cover yet, so there’s new and exciting new birds for you to fall in love with! I’m anxious to see which ones you all like!

    • proudblond@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      5 天前

      I was just thinking the same as I scrolled through this list! Can’t remember who they were up against but it must have been a tough seed. GHO is and will always be my absolute favorite, partly because their expressions are so cat-like and partially because their hoot is the best IMO.

      • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
        0·
        5 天前

        I’ve thought about doing a blind “hoot off” where there are unlabeled clips of hoots, but some owls are tough to find equal quality recordings of. GHO is top tier with its hoot, no denying it!

        GHO lost out to one of last year’s surprise juggernauts, the Flammulated Owl. Flammy is a stunning owl too, so I was stunned, but glad to see a less common owl get so popular for a bit.

        Here’s the whole bracket for reference:

    • kokopelli@lemmy.world
      0·
      4 天前

      My vote is for this guy. I visited a place in the Alps where these guys lived in the cliffs and some local family friends said to never leave your baby under 2 months unattended because the “Uhus” can still carry them at that age.

          • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
            0·
            4 天前

            To be fair, I haven’t come across any reliable stories about a hawk, owl, or eagle actually doing anything other than swooping a pet or child to guard their territory. They’re all much bigger than their normal prey and don’t much look like their normal prey.

            Looking up the stats on the Powerful Owl for another reply, most raptors won’t bother with anything over 20% of their body weight. PO is named so because it will take much larger arboreal mammals, but even then a car or newborn is still more than 100% body weight.

            • kokopelli@lemmy.world
              0·
              4 天前

              Yeah, it definitely seemed like a folk tale the way it was told. But it’s interesting that it exists at all.

              Here’s a photo of the cliffs across the small valley if you’re curious!

                • kokopelli@lemmy.world
                  0·
                  4 天前

                  It’s taken from a small castle/museum in the Italian Alps called Brunnenburg. At the top of the cliff, you can barely see a larger castle called Schloss Tirol, they’ll both show up on Google maps if you search for it. It’s one of, if not the most beautiful places I’ve been and I keep going back