First pic: "oh shit, did I leave the oven on?"

Second: "I'm really worried about Steve's drinking.."

My vote is for this guy. I visited a place in the Alps where these guys lived in the cliffs and some local family friends said to never leave your baby under 2 months unattended because the “Uhus” can still carry them at that age.

Crazy that GHO didn’t make it past round one!

It IS pretty great, yeah!

Is it trying mind control?

It's true! I spotted it!

So does it bench twice its bodyweight or is it like an owl senator? 🤔

I was just thinking the same as I scrolled through this list! Can’t remember who they were up against but it must have been a tough seed. GHO is and will always be my absolute favorite, partly because their expressions are so cat-like and partially because their hoot is the best IMO.

I think most of the fun comes from having the difficult choices.

A few people chimed in last year that we shouldn't be pitting them against each other, that it's not a competition and we should love them all equal, etc.

That's the whole point of the contest! They're all great, so how does one choose?! It's a challenge for us, not for the birds, they're just pictures.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the contest, and I look forward to hearing about everyone's difficult decisions! It's a ton of work for me, but at least I don't have to decide anything once I have the bracket made, then it's up to you!

Thankfully she comes from a very long line of strongly opinionated people! 😆

I think there were 2 ties last year, but neither was a tough decision for her. She knows she's the tiebreaker though, and takes the responsibility with the utmost sincerity! She's the one that really kickstarted my interest in owls after all.

I'm somewhat actually looking into that now. I'm getting married next year, and we were discussing an owl couple cake topper.

There are people that make them for a living and there are quite an array of styles out of different materials like wood, resin, and 3D printing.

Based on current research, one not as fancy as the trophy rendering is going for $200 for a 5x7 inch figure.

This has me also looking at cheap vintage owl figures that don't weigh a ton! 😅

Seems a good side hustle for someone with useful artistic skills.

I made the image with ArtBot, which is my go to for quick but decent AI images. I think this prompt was just "simplified but realistic owl trophy gold and dark wood."

I would have liked just 2 toes forward on each foot, but they can have 3 forward if they want, so I called this good enough.

I did it. I assume I did it correctly as it changed the font style when it updated. 😅

Let me know if I did it right or wrong, I don't know how all these things work.

Change 1:

Last year I had chosen all the starting owls.

Those that won the first round are in the opening round for this year by default.

This post has the owls that lost Round 1 last year. The top 8 in this post will be added to this year's tournament and get a second chance. The bottom 8 are not popular enough to be competitive.

There will be another post like this next week with 16 new owls that were not in the game at all last year. Same rules for that round. Top 8 fill out the last 8 spots.

So this year's game will consist of:

• 16 owls that won at least 1 round last year
• 8 that lost right away last year but now get another chance in case they just got a difficult pairing, such as an unfamiliar owl vs a very popular one.
• 8 brand new owls (I've got some very new and unique ones that haven't even been posted about before!)

The goal is to try to make all the rounds more competitive and have less one-sided first round matches. You guys have already picked the most popular ones, so there are none that don't have at least a decent amount of fans.

Change 2:

Last year, I made a surprise donation to my own local animal rescue on behalf of Superbowl. I got an owl plaque put up in the wall of donors and they got a cash donation.

Post Link

This year, if there were any rescue stories that really touched your heart or if one group stood out to you as doing the most good, you can nominate they get a donation on behalf of our community. I will pay for it, you guys just decide where you want it to go.

Other than that, it's still just upvote who you like best, most votes wins, just like before.