Let me start with my apologies, I stayed up too late trying to prep these posts and accidentally posted Screech vs Scops too soon. I'll leave that open the full 24 hours from now as I intended, so if you've already been to that post, just head back over there after this and you can upvote your choice now.
Welcome to the Battle of the Giants! While the Great Grey would be the longest owl, it is also more feather by volume than most owls. Going by actual mass, the 2 contestants today are the biggest and baddest of them owl!
Blakiston's Fish Owl (new and improved name pending) could be call the King of the North. Found only in the coldest parts of Japan, China, and Russia, this is the biggest owl of all. The BFO is actually a closer relative to the Eagle Owls than to the Fish Owls, so we also have a bit of family rivalry today, though we still aren't sure if its true lineage yet. Males weigh in at up to 8 lbs /3.6 kg, and the females 10 lbs / 4.6 kg. Length is up to 28 in / 72 cm. They have unique fluffy plumicorns that look weighed down to the sides. As large as they are, they are still cavity nesters! This means they have very limited places left to exist, as they need very old undisturbed forest with dead trees large enough they can fit inside, while still being close to the water for them to hunt. This makes these owls very rare these days, as the remaining ones are in places inhospitable to humans.
The Eurasian Eagle Owl is likely much more familiar. This owl lives across most of Europe and Asia, with some similar relatives filling out the southern parts of Eurasian down into Africa. Size-wise it comes close to the Blakiston's, measuring around and inch or so, 3 cm, shorter. The mass of some can just about match the Blakiston's, but they typically are still short of tipping the scales. They survive in a much wider range of environments, including mountains, more open forest, steppe, and can even manage to do well in farmland or huge cities. This is the species of owl that Flaco, the rogue New York City owl sensation was. These owls nest in rock piles and cliff faces, so they are not bound to huge trees. The Eurasian Eagle Owl is also adapted to survive on a much wider range of prey than most owls, managing to hunt successfully enough to catch enough prey that would be too small for most birds its size.
Will the reclusive King of Cold warm your heart, or will the versatile Eagle Owl rock your world? Upvote your favorite!
It's all bright in the clinic and it's hurt and doesn't know what's going on in the orange towel pics.
In the crate, it's likely feeling at least a little better from getting its wing set and some fluids back in its system, and now has the energy and wherewithal to be its natural, feisty self again.
Most posts I read say and angry owl is a healthy owl! ๐ Sounds a bit counter-intuitive to social creatures like us, but owls thrive with their solitude.
Somewhat tangential, but with the comments about "baby schema" over the weekend, I was reading if that scientist had done any work with owls, and while he didn't, he had an interesting story about a fellow scientist trying to breed domesticated owls.
The guy sounded like he was imprinting the owls to people, possibly himself, and the owls would be good with people due to the imprinting. The problem arose though was what to do next. Due to being human imprinted, the owls saw themselves as somewhat human, and displayed all their mating attention with the paired human. This certainly doesn't result in ending up with new, domesticated owls though.
When placed with other owls of their kind, they were really hesitant to bond with the opposite sex owls to make new owls. Some eventually would mate, but if that original bonded human ever showed up to the aviary again, the bonded owl would go crazy at its actual owl-mate and try to drive them off, as they were bonded harder to their human imprint. Seemingly the classic owl monogamy is pretty strong! So without being able to keep the human bond and the owl bond, the project went nowhere.
I didn't think that was enough for a full post. Maybe I can look into it more, but even that bit I thought was quite interesting.