Four owls are coming

[Ann]

Yea, verily I tell you: Four owls are coming.

Click to view full size image

Ann

[mak¢]

4 owl horsemen

[neufer]

4 owl horsemen

And I looked, and behold a pink owl: and her name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with her. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

[Ann]

Four stoned owls are not coming.

Thou shalt not stone an owl. Nor shalt thou stone four owls. Nor shalt thou make unto thee a graven image, nor four graven images, of four stoned owls.

Four stoned owls are not coming, I say unto you.



Ann

[Ann]

The owls perched in a tree.

They have taken wing again.


(Two have set off already.)

Ann

[Ann]

http://www.digitalmediatree.com/sallymc ... ack/45828/

Ann

[neufer]

Condescending owls, hard-diving ducks
John Kelly, Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 20, 2010

<<If you've ever thought of owls as haughty - that is,
snobbish, arrogant and disdainfully proud - you are not alone.
Caldwell Hahn thinks they're haughty, too, and she's an owl expert.

Caldwell Hahn holds a screech owl at the Patuxent
Wildlife Research Center. A colony of owls is used in research there.

Wait, I probably shouldn't say Caldwell thinks they're haughty. She thinks they look haughty. And they do. With their erect posture and heavily lidded eyes, the Eastern screech owls we are examining at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel look like imperious matrons. Some look like sleepy imperious matrons, which is not surprising, given that it's a little after 10 a.m. Owls are nocturnal, and we've waked them up.

The owl colony at Patuxent numbers about 60, each family of four or five housed in an outdoor chain-link enclosure about the size of a teenager's bedroom. Just opposite the owls are cages holding about 75 American kestrels.

Caldwell, a research biologist, slips on some yellow leather gloves, then hands me a pair. If the talons don't get you when you're handling owls, the beak will - and the talons will get you. Our hands protected, Caldwell snares an owl in a big round net at the end of a pole. Except for its eyeballs, the bird is pretty much all brown, white and gray feathers. Even its feet are covered with feathers, a feature that allows the predators to swoop noiselessly on their prey.

Caldwell shows me how to hold the owl - don't squeeze the legs too tightly - then passes it to me. The owl has gone from haughty to slightly annoyed - those celadon eyes really are expressive - but eventually it settles down and lets its eyelids slip to half-mast. Now it looks, well, a little stoned, not so much screech owl as Cheech owl. I hold it a few minutes, then let it fly to a little nesting box to snuggle with its kin.

Why would the research center need a bunch of screech owls? To research, of course. Scientists study such things as how avian embryos develop and how West Nile virus spreads. Their findings could make birds' lives a little easier. Increasingly, humans and birds intersect, and figuring out what that means for birds is a lot of what's done at the center.>>

[owlice]

we've waked them up

I have waked. (Really?!)

If I wake up a sleeping something, can I really later say "I have waked them up"? I use the past participle "woken" in that case. "I've woken them up."

In fact, I don't use "waked" as the past participle of "to wake" at all. It's an irregular verb, or so I thought! Has it been regularized?

Where's a language maven when one's needed?!

[Ann]

Well, my Swedish-English dictionary - if you want to trust that - says that "waked" is an acceptable participle to "wake", but "woken" is certainly acceptable, too.

That's what the Swedes say, anyway!

Ann

[Ann]

And I think I can spot the owls on the horizon now...



Hmmm, there are six owls here. But only four are coming.

Ann

[bystander]

we've waked them up

I have waked. (Really?!)?!

Really! It's an acceptable replacement for woke or woken.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/waked

[neufer]

we've waked them up

I have waked. (Really?!)?!

Really! It's an acceptable replacement for woke or woken.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/waked

• • A Midsummer Night's Dream Act 3, Scene 2
  PUCK: I led them on in this distracted fear,
  • And left sweet Pyramus translated there:
    When in that moment, so it came to pass,
    Titania waked and straightway loved an ass.

[owlice]

Puck's usage is an intrasitive verb; I don't know that I have ever heard "waked" used transitively, as the reporter used it. If that usage is correct (and preferred), the verb has lost its irregularity.

I'll keep a lookout for a handbasket.

[Ann]

Ann

[bystander]

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Click to view full size image

Click to view full size image

Click to view full size image

[Ann]

Ann

[neufer]

Puck's usage is an intrasitive verb; I don't know that I have ever heard "waked" used transitively,
as the reporter used it. If that usage is correct (and preferred), the verb has lost its irregularity.

• • The Tempest Act 5, Scene 1
  PROSPERO: graves at my command
  . Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
  . By my so potent Art.

[Ann]

Arrival!!!

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

The owls have arrived! They are here!!!

Owlice has just hit 1828 posts! 1828 = 457 + 457 + 457 + 457! Four Owl Clusters, 4 X NGC 457!









Owlice, an Owl to the power of four!!!

Ann

P.S. I'm glad we can see your owls now, bystander. They are indeed lovely. And there are four of them, too!

[BMAONE23]

Ann

This one appears to be Owling at the Moon

[emc]

Beautiful ABBA music Ann... Perfect choice!

I've been listening to it while working today.

Lots of cool owl pics.

[BMAONE23]

Wonderful creatures
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_ne ... 246831.stm

The strange whiskered owl had not been spotted for 26 years

---

[Beyond]

OH-Man, i can't believe i didn't see this owl thread until now. What a HOOT!!!! I give it a rating

[neufer]

In India, the mystical owl often faces a dangerous fate
By Rama Lakshmi Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 6, 2010

Spotted owlets are offered at Chowk market near Charminar in Hyderabad. Indian shamans use owl parts to ward off illness and misfortune. (Abrar Ahmed/wwf India)

---

<<IN MEERUT, INDIA Mehmood Ali is a carpenter by day and shaman by night. He says he heals people battling anxiety, sleeplessness, curses and misfortune. The soft-spoken, 50-year-old Ali uses body parts of owls in his elaborate sorcery rituals for healing. Trade in owls was made illegal in India in 1972, but trafficking for such rituals is carried on clandestinely across the country.

In a crowded lane in the heart of the industrial town of Meerut, about 45 miles northeast of New Delhi, half a dozen small, dingy shops sell several species of caged birds as pets. The owls are not displayed like the other birds, and shopkeepers deny they sell them. But that's where Ali says he can get an owl for $250 and its nails and feathers for as little as $20.

An 18-year study of the illegal owl trade in India titled "Imperilled Custodians of the Night," published last month by the World Wildlife Fund, says, "Owls and their body parts are primarily used for black magic." It reports that the most popular owls for rituals among the 32 species that live on the Indian subcontinent are ones with prominent ear tufts, such as the rock eagle owl, or feather tufts that stick up like long ears, such as the brown fish owl. The most common owl in India, the spotted owlet, does not have those characteristics, so traders sometimes use latex to make a few feathers stand up to resemble horns.

The clientele are either from tribal areas, where the majority of people are superstitious and use both live and dead owls to ward off evil spirits, or from towns and cities, where demand is created by practicing shamans, or tantriks, as they are called. People turn to these practitioners for all sorts of problems, from marital to business to health, and even for setting a curse on another or releasing themselves from one.

"Owl is the king of the birds and has enormous powers. When I chant into an owl's nail and give it as a talisman, it cures sleeplessness and restlessness. When I chant into the feather from an owl's breast and make a talisman, then the owl speaks in your dream and shows you the way," said Ali with pride, baring his reddish, betel-stained teeth. "If you want to vanquish your enemy, then owl's blood and bones are used." He chants next to the live owl for hours by the river at night before the bird is purified and made effective for magical remedies.

India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said that more children were being given owls as pets because of the immensely popular books and movies about Harry Potter and his feathered companion, Hedwig. "There seems to be a strange fascination even among the urban middle classes for presenting their children with owls," he said.

Domestic research in owls has grown since the forest owlet, thought to be extinct, was rediscovered in India in 1997 by American ornithologists Ben F. King and Pamela C. Rasmussen. "There is no scientific owl census in India, but ornithologists have reported in the past two decades that the chances of spotting an owl are becoming difficult," said Samir Sinha, head of India's branch of Traffic, the trade watchdog of the WWF. "The threat to the owl in India is twofold. One is the habitat loss because the old tree forests are shrinking. Then there is the hidden and dramatic threat of human superstitions." Sinha said that police seizures of smuggled owls show that India is a major supplier of the birds to neighboring Nepal and Bangladesh, where they are used in similar rituals. "Owls and owl parts are regularly seized in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand," he said.

The morbid and mysterious powers associated with them across civilizations have fueled the illegal trade in the region. An owl is the vehicle on which Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, travels and is often worshiped for bringing prosperity. Because the owls are nocturnal birds, they are associated with secret powers of the spirit or with death.

"Birds like owls are sold at a premium, brought in only following a specific request by a customer for use in black magic. Often they are delivered to the client's doorstep," the WWF report says. "Therefore such trade remains undocumented, as the sold specimens are secretly sacrificed." It adds that by 2008, market prices of owls had risen up to 10 times the level of six years earlier and that there are at least 50 active selling hubs in India. Abrar Ahmed, the ornithologist who wrote the report, said prices rose due to a dwindling owl population and increased difficulty in hunting and trading since being made illegal.

"The book of owl rituals called 'Ullu Tantra' has about 150 formulas. The diversity of uses of owl body parts is so large that it takes a toll on the owl population and makes it vulnerable. Even owl tears and egg shells are listed," said Abrar. "People are turning to these kinds of superstitious beliefs to ward off misfortune. Classified black magic ads in daily newspapers in small towns routinely promise relief from urban stress, business loss and illnesses."

Before Diwali, the most auspicious Hindu festival of lights, in November, researchers noted a spike in ritualistic sacrifice of owls to please the goddess Lakshmi. Owl eggs and eyeballs are used in folk recipes and potions by some tribal communities, and its meat is considered an aphrodisiac. Owls are used by some street performers, and parts are sold outside courthouses to people awaiting verdicts.

Recently, Mehmood Ali recalled buying a live owl for a ritual. But he dreamed that night that its parents came and warned him against killing the little owl. "The parents of the owl said if I harm their child, they will curse my children too," he said. The next morning, Ali released the little owl in the woods.>>