Owls are, of course, Honorary Cats™, being the most feline of all birds. Several days ago, Bored Panda published a collection of 74 nice owl pictures. I’ll show just a half dozen of my favorites, but the site has 68 more. If you’re an owlophile (I’m sure there’s a technical name for this), go see.
Look at this little guy (is it a saw-whet owl?)! It’s from hometownperch:
Takeoff in the snow; from imgur.com, with the caption
The northern Hawk Owl is an explosive killer, and extremely hard to capture. 1/2000 of a second shutter speed and 5 hours in -22 Celsius got me the shot 🙂
From Austin Thomas, who says this is “A little owl out for a stroll.” He’s strutting his stuff!
From Donald M. Jones (species, please?):
A great horned owl from Peter Krejzl:
From Strangetravel.com; can you spot the owl?
h/t: Su
If owls are the most feline of birds then my late, great cat Shirley was the most owl of felines.
Agreed! She does appear owlish in that photo!
Great pic Sastra!
I love owls too. 🙂
We had a very owl like cat too. It’s the wide eyes and angry eyebrows that do it. I wonder if I have a picture somewhere…
Love the pic of Shirley- she is NOT impressed..
Those are all amazing pictures. Thanks for sharing.
The fourth picture looks like a Northern Pygmy-Owl.
Owl 4 is, I think a Northern Pygmy Owl Glaucidium californicum
1) Northern Saw-whet Owl Aegolius acadicus
2)Northern Hawk Owl Surnia ulula
3) Borrowing Owl Athene cunicularia
4)Given that it’s perched on a spruce tip I call:
Boreal Owl Aegolius funereous
but Graham could be right, hard to tell apart.
5) Great Horned Owl Bubo virginianus
6) Great Gray Owl Strix Nebulosa
Can’t you see I’m invisible?
My daughter, a confirmed strigiphile, agrees with RobK and Graham, a northern pygmy owl.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8388/8479936941_b12544d184.jpg
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You have spruce trees?
Whoever took that picture does! It was one Bethan forwarded to me from the interwebz.
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Gorgeous Ant! 🙂
A wonderful post! Love the camouflage in the last pic!
Yup, it’s walking to my place to get some cash.
Burrowing Owl.
Nice parliament of owls on that site. I think the word for a owl lover would have to be strigidaphile.
daOh come on, that first one can’t be real! His prey must think “Even I have to admit, you’re ridiculously cute.”
And am I the only one who hears “Eye of the Tiger” playing with picture no. 3?
Love owls!
@ Stephen Barnard
Bubophile
See #6.1.
I think an owl lover would be strigiphile. An owl loving louse is Strigiphilus garylarsoni – named after the far side cartoonist.
+1
Owl #3 is strutting its stuff like it’s nobody’s business.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lyu1KKwC74
Fantastic pics! #3 is a boss!
Owl #3, “It’s time to kick some arse!”
A photographer I found, named Russell Savory takes cute owl pictures (among others). I find this picture of a little owl heading straight for the camera really really adorable!
Love it! 🙂
Have you read Desmond Morris’s wonderful book “Owl”?
See: http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781861895257&nat=false&stem=true&sf1=keyword&st1=owl&m=1&dc=4
I fostered Ethelred, a “pet” saw-whet, for a couple of months a few decades ago. Cute little bird, especially if you’re into musical-saw music. His mom was a shrike specialist, who took the owl on after a road accident made it impossible to rehab him to freedom.
One can never see enough owls!
Sub. Wonderful.
So looking up cats that look like owls (few compete with my long dead cat… I’ll have to find a photo), I ran across this interesting photo of an owl snatching up a cat:
http://dailym.ai/1uAPM4S
Yikes! And that led me to this story of a d*g (I’m not sure if the tiny beastie in the story really qualifies) being picked up by an owl:
http://bit.ly/1Dt8DJE