Truly shocked to come across a new original picture of a. BFO! 😮

This must have been such a special opportunity for the photographer.

From Jonathan Wadsworth

Blakiston’s Fish Owl, the largest owl in the world.

Settings: 800mm, 1/80s, f/6.3, ISO 8000

This photo was taken at a licensed observatory in Hokkaido, where a special pulsing LED light provides both birdwatchers and scientists a place to observe the owls without disturbing them or seeking them out in their sensitive nesting areas.

Unfortunately, they are critically endangered, relying on mature boreal forest near clean-flowing rivers, habitat that is drastically disappearing. In Hokkaido, conservation has been successful so far, with the population increasing from only 70 birds in the 1980s to at least 160 now. It’s still a perilously small population however.

  • anon6789OP
    5•5 hours ago

    Sacred ceremony for the spirits of owls

    Until several hundreds of years ago, the Ainu practiced iyomante, a ceremony to send the spirits of gods back to the divine realm. Of these ceremonies, those to send back the spirits of Blakiston’s fish owls, which were referred to as kotankorkamuy or mosirkorkamuy (the god of the village), were the most formal ritual occasions in Ainu culture. Records show that people sent back the spirits of the owls they hunted in ceremonies that went on for several days.

    • @CluckN
      2•4 hours ago

      Holy hell I thought that first image thumbnail was the actual size of the owl.

      • anon6789OP
        3•4 hours ago

        Lol didn’t mean to scare you!

        The closest we’ve had to that was the Cuban Giant Owl from the Late Pleistocene period (126,000 to 11,700 years ago). Wikipedia tells me humands didn’t come to Cuba until around 4000 BC so we neither got to eat or get eaten by these giant owls.