In honor of our little buddy WFS winning the big tournament, I thought this guy might make a nice transition back to my normal postings.
Giant Scops is the largest of the Scops (genus Otus) owls. He comes in at a monstrous 12 inches / 30 cm. White Faced Scops is 9.5 inches / 24 cm.
The Giant Scops is only found on 3 islands in the Philippines, one of which essentially has no trees left, and the other 2 are leased to logging companies. 😒
I do too! I like the black water droplet like spots going down the front and the heavier looking eyebrow ridges.
Thought it would be fun to compare this one to the White Faced Scops we spent all week admiring to show the diversity of the Otus genus and highlight why it got split up a few times over the years. With WFS (Ptilopsis) in Africa, Giant Scops in far East Asia (Otus, the original genus), and the Screech Owls (Megascops) you can tell just by looking at them they are pretty significantly different.
There are still 56 species of owl today that are still in the Otus genus, so between them and the handful that have gotten their own new genus, that’s a lot of Scops!
I had kinda hoped when this group started here it would have a different name, but the Reddit sub does have almost half a million subscribers, so most people are probably coming from there, so this is familiar with them.
There is also a FoxNews on Lemmy somewhere that is nothing but fox pictures. Also one of the Conservative ones got taken over by a conservationist. Those were both entertaining to find.
I like when people check in, even if it’s just an emoji or “nice owl” or whatever. It let’s me know you’re there, plus I like both seeing the same names coming back and new ones showing up for the first time. It gives me an idea too if I should keep posting new info and pics or rehash some old stuff to get new people caught up.
A lot of owl photos have the same look as I do when woken up in the mornings, though now I think about it the times humans photograph them are likely not when they’re at their most awake either!
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