For me, !superbowl@lemmy.world is basically the only active community that I really love on Lemmy and the main reason why I keep coming back here. Other places can be fun too, but Superbowl is just different. There are so many funny owl pictures in them as well as so many informative posts (mainly the Owl-natomy Posts). Also, it is a very positive place. I highly recommend checking it out!

Glad you liked it!

About the ecology, I can’t point to anything particular that makes them thrive now. Something interesting that I left out of the post which I read in the article that wasn’t available online, was that the owls eat different food in the Netherlands than in Germany. In Germany there are a lot of rodents, but in the Netherlands the rodents populations are smaller because of very intensive agriculture. Because of this, the Dutch owls eat more other species (they unfortunately did not specify what those species were).

One trend that is visible in nature in Western Europe is that smaller fauna are struggling, but larger species are doing really well. In the Netherlands we have seen reintroductions of not only the Eagle Owl, but also the white-tailed Eagle, the beaver, the otter and the wolf (and maybe the lynx too in the near future). On top of that we have seen big population increases of cranes, geese, deer and probably some more that I don’t know about. This is mostly because of conservation efforts and hunting being banned.

And I didn’t know that about the Kattenstoet, sounds very interesting!

I have no English sources for you, but with some translation app you can probably still check them out. One article that I used is not available online unfortunately.

The Owl Camera(they have other owls and other birds too, as well as some interesting articles. The site is only in Dutch unfortunately).

[Article by NOS](Oehoe bezig aan opmars: ‘Mogelijk al boven de honderd’ - https://nos.nl/l/2519607), the public broadcasting service. From this article is the ringing video that I talked about in the post.

This German Site which has some numbers about the Eurasian Eagle Owl in Germany. They also have This article that talks about how the Eurasian Eagle Owl was perceived in the past in Germany. It is really interesting, so definitely check it out! They have some more articles that are very interesting too.

Also some random linguistic facts: The Eurasian Eagle Owl is called Oehoe in Dutch and Uhu in German; both pronounced as “oo-hoo”. This is the only Dutch owl name that doesn’t end in owl; it is also an onomatopeia.

!biodiversity@mander.xyz may be a good place, especially if you have some information on its impact on biodiversity. It’s not a community dedicated to depressing news, but anything that has to do with science goes on Mander.xyz, even when it’s sad.

I myself would be interested in articles you have to share, I never heard of this before!

If you haven’t already, check out the Owl-natomy posts! They are a great way to learn a lot about the general anatomy of owls; I at least learned a lot from those posts.

This is so glorious! Thanks for posting!

I completely understand the weather thing. In the Netherlands it doesn’t get that cold, but the rain is really annoying (it rained basically non-stop from october till late february). In the city where I live however, there is also a pretty good bus service, so you can avoid cycling longer distances in the rain. For me I find cycling in good weather so good for my mental and physical health that I wouldn’t want to go without it.

You say an e-bike doesn’t quite do it for you, and I’m curious what you mean. Is it that it doesn’t have the range, that the engine isn’t strong enough for hills, or something else? I would love to learn about more disadvantages of micromobility, so I can create more nuanced opinions.

Look at those legs of the Buff Fronted and Galapagos Short Eared owls! You can see they trained for this!

They both stare right into my soul, and I love it

It’s here! And immediately a BFO showoff! KC Screech immediately comes in with an all-star lineup (Buffy, Snowy, Flammy, WFS), but SF Bay Owl has such cute ones, as well as the OG BFO. This will be an interesting first match!

In a post on c/aww the same question was raised. The reply of the great anon6789 includes an article with a bit more information. anon6789 reply

I know it’s just a meme, but when I see anti-Lobelia propaganda of any kind, it fills my veins with rage. Therefore I now spread the truth that Lobelia did nothing wrong, but that Bilbo framed her as a thief. Here is why:

Once upon a time, the hobbits lived peacefully in the Shire, never needing to leave their paradise, therefore never leaving it. However, one day Bilbo suddenly disappears with a wizard and some weird beard-dudes. Then he does not return.

Obviously, he is dead. So his family inherits his estate, among other things, and Lobelia moves into Bag-End.

Now Bilbo is returning from his adventure in the Hobbit. While vibing with Gollum, he had taken the ring of power, and now he comes back to his home. What he sees here horrifies him: His own home is being taken by Lobelia! This fills him with rage.

To understand matters fully, we must understand the power of the One Ring, as well as Bilbo’s psychology. The power of the ring, as is clear in the LOTR books, lies in corrupting the mind. However, we can point to a specific type of corruption: possession. This is logical, as Saurons goal was to possess all of Middle-Earth. You can see this influence of the ring with Frodo becoming paranoid, being mad at Sam for taking the ring.

Now Bilbo. He never went outside the Shire, the only place he calls home. He is continuously among strangers and obviously longs for home. Now when he finally comes home, he sees that this home is taken from him. With the ring already corrupting him he cannot think clearly and therefore doesn’t see how it is logical that others would think he is dead.

But the ring doesn’t stop corrupting Bilbo’s mind. He spins a fake tale to justify his possession of the ring and doesn’t even trust his best friend Gandalf.

Now the question is: why would he only care about posessing the ring? The rings power can’t solely lie in this, for then it would be useless to Sauron. The only logical conclusion is that he became more paranoid every day and started justifying himself in all his possessions.

Now to the point: Bilbo, paranoid as he was, tried to attack Lobelia in every way. She was a selfish person, always trying to get Bilbo’s house and his furniture and what not. Most notably, he said that Lobelia took his spoons, without providing any evidence.

The only thing that we can really say about Lobelia personality is her conversation with Frodo and the second-to-last chapter. The conversation with Frodo does put her in a bad light, but we must remember that Frodo was heavily influenced, or rather indoctrinated, by Bilbo, so this can’t be seen as an objective source. This means the only thing we know about Lobelia is that she was the most courageous of all Hobbits in fighting Saruman and his gang.

If you have mad it this far, I am sure you have been convinced of this truth, and if not, I invite you to give your arguments so that I can crush them.

Tl;dr: Lobelia was right

Buff Fronted it is then! Curious what owls the rest of the community comes up with!

Someone’s been learning a lot of owls!

Well, I just looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_owl_species?wprov=sfla1 trying to find BFO’s.

I kind of misunderstood the idea it seems, but your rules are probably more fair.

One question: are you allowed to do multiple suggestions (in separate comments), or only one suggestion per commenter? I would love to see Buff-Fronted in this, as I didn’t know about it and it seems to be a very interesting species. However, I don’t want to let the Blakiston’s Fish Owl down.

Anyway, thanks for organising yet another fun event for the Superbowl community. It’s always nice to wake up to a new post!

As someone who barely knows anything about American Football, I have spent way too much time researching this. It was worth it though, for I have finally found the truth about the greatest owl team in the world:

Once upon a time, American football was just American. However, the CIA wanted to increase the influence of America around the world, and therefore started pushing for an international football league. They wanted to call it the International Football League, but the name was owned by Donald Trump. Therefore they named it World League of American Football, or WLAF. However, the WLAF stopped after just two seasons.

One of the teams in the WLAF was the Birmingham Fire from Alabama. But when the team was about to disband, something unexpected happened. A coup.

A group of owls took control over the team and rebranded it to Birdmingham Fire Owlabama, or, in short, BFO. The owls in the team were all BFO’s: Blakiston’s Fish Owl, Buffy Fish Owl, Brown Fish Owl and Buff-Fronted Owl.

However, the owls realised that just 4 members would not be enough to compete in serious competition, which is why they haven’t played in all these past 30 years. But things are changing: real progress is being made to get to at least 6 BFO’s. The Bare Legged Owl, although no real BFO, has become part of the BFO’s under the name of Bare Footed Owl. When accused of betraying their name, the Bare Footed Owl replied: “what is a leg, other than an extended foot?”

A sixth member is still missing, although Blakiston’s Fish Owl argues that they count for two due to their size. Opponents of this say that the balance is restored if intelligence is taken into account.

In short, the idea is: team Birdmingham Fire, Owlabama. Members: Blakiston’s Fish, Buffy Fish, Brown Fish, Buff-Fronted, Bare Legged.

I don’t know about this idea myself, because there really aren’t any more BFO’s that I could find. Also, maybe we want NFL teams instead of long disbanded ones. If anyone has an idea for improvement, please let me know!

It’s bad at reproducing good hair, so it’s good at reproducing bad hair; that would be my guess.

I’m so sorry, little dude! Force of habit: when I see owls, my monke brain goes “upvote”.

What about Fangorn and Tom Bombadil? 1 is basically a tree and the other a merry fellow, so I think they are perfect owl names.

Polling would definitely be nice to have!

Yeah, Superbowl is really what makes me stay on lemmy, because of its uniqueness. I like the memes and stuff, but I can find those on Reddit too; same with politics. Meanwhile many, to me, more interesting communities have basically died. Back in july there was a lot or activity on the Netherlands community; now that’s almost gone completely. This means I’ve been lurking more and more on Reddit.

Your point on niche communities is interesting. However I don’t think many other niches could really thrive with Lemmy’s userbase. I think the thing with this community is that it has things for “normies” to enjoy (the cute owl pics), as well as fun things to learn for the dedicated owl nerds. This is not the case for other niche community like specific games, where you will not look at or engage with if you don’t play the game yourself.

I myself came here for the cute owls and stayed for the owl knowledge, and I’m slowly getting more and more stuck in the rabbit hole (or Burrowing Owl burrow). I don’t know how many others have this experience, but I feel like this way many people who didn’t care for owls are now part of c/superbowl. Which is amazing, but I fear that this may be hard to replicate with other communities. What we need is probably Spez removing downvotes or something as stupid, to get more users and to get other niches really going.

I’m really thankful for you and this community, and the positivity from the community. I only lurked on Reddit, but here I’ve actually posted something (the bfo propaganda), and the reception was good. It didn’t get many upvotes, but then others started with more propaganda, which was quite nice. I have some anxiety problems, so posting was a big deal for me, but I’m definitely going to do it again when I have something to post!