Superbowl
For owls that are superb.
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US Wild Animal Rescue Database: Animal Help Now
International Wildlife Rescues: RescueShelter.com
Australia Rescue Help: WIRES
Germany-Austria-Switzerland-Italy Wild Bird Rescue: wildvogelhilfe.org
If you find an injured owl:
Note your exact location so the owl can be released back where it came from. Contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitation specialist to get correct advice and immediate assistance.
Minimize stress for the owl. If you can catch it, toss a towel or sweater over it and get it in a cardboard box or pet carrier. It should have room to be comfortable but not so much it can panic and injure itself. If you can’t catch it, keep people and animals away until help can come.
Do not give food or water! If you feed them the wrong thing or give them water improperly, you can accidentally kill them. It can also cause problems if they require anesthesia once help arrives, complicating procedures and costing valuable time.
If it is a baby owl, and it looks safe and uninjured, leave it be. Time on the ground is part of their growing up. They can fly to some extent and climb trees. If animals or people are nearby, put it up on a branch so it’s safe. If it’s injured, follow the above advice.
For more detailed help, see the OwlPages Rescue page.
Community Rules:
Posts must be about owls. Especially appreciated are photographs (not AI) and scientific content, but artwork, articles, news stories, personal experiences and more are welcome too.
Be kind. If a post or comment bothers you, or strikes you as offensive in any way, please report it and moderators will take appropriate action.
AI is discouraged. If you feel strongly that the community would benefit from a post that involves AI you may submit it, but it might be removed if the moderators feel that it is low-effort or irrelevant.
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The best resource for species ID is something like this, where you can A/B them relatively simply.
They're grouped by genus, so you can compare the ones most closely related and learn to spot the differences quickly, rather than comparing 2 random owls.
It also makes it nice for if you find one owl you like, you can find other similar ones.
I came into this knowing just about 6 owl types. Then it was just sharing a fact or two that I read to keep this community alive. Then I went to 2 posts a day, to 3, and eventually 5 I think was my max, but I had to cut it back some this year. It was really just a "fake it until you make it" thing. I don't have any formal training, but now after a year of working in a wildlife rehab, I have been debating it. I attended a conference last weekend and really loved all I learned there and meeting some of the people I've featured here.
It's tricky, because it is a magical career, but there's no money in it, no days off because animals don't get days off, a lot of seeing animal cruelty and performing euthanasia, and so on. So I'm trying to find a path with more and more hands on while not getting completely sucked into the full "this is what I am now" thing.
I'm getting asked to do an open house presentation and also to mentor new clinic volunteers, so my opportunities are still growing. For someone who both loves animals and endless learning of new knowledge, this has been an amazing path Lemmy has sent me on.
If you want to learn, start posting. Don't feel you're in competition with me, just share things you find that you like. People will ask questions, and see if you can find the answer. Or see if there is a wildlife clinic or raptor rehab near you. There was no real qualifications for me to join. I just needed a background check since the Ed Center has kids come in, and a quick interview to make sure I wasn't some wierdo and had realistic expectations on what was and wasn't involved with being a volunteer. I see my place has even refined it this year to get newbies into a more focused path of what types of animals (or even jobs where you help the animals but don't have to handle them at all) so people can do more of what they want and less what they don't.
But whatever you do, just keep at it and you will learn so much. I'm here to support anyone who wants to go further, and this community as a whole has been amazing to me on my journey getting to this point.
Thank you for your input, this is amazing info also on your personal owl-conaisseur-development.
Of course! We all start with zero knowledge about everything, and at some point in life we often forget that. We may never become experts on all the things we enjoy, I've been trying to make music for 20 years now and still consider myself a novice, but we can still enjoy new things even if we never reach the level of expertise we envy. Trying something and never getting good is still often more fun than never trying!