Photo Credit: Flammie in hand by Steve Joyce
WE DID IT! Official count 55 v 52 for the Flammulated Owl in match 23
Vote for Flammy here in Match 27: https://lemmy.world/comment/6056153
Edit: These Strigiformes are so different, I think it really came down to the campaign bump. The big, powerful, regal, black-tie formal; verses the small, nimble, versatile, style maven.. Just a real fun pros vs. pros match. 🦉🤘
The Flammulated Owl is as big as an American Robin.
Highly effective camouflage with a flaming flourish
Classic "hoot hoots"
Conservation queens, living in existing tree cavities left by other animals
Knows how to party, they will live communally during breeding seasons
Ultra athletes travelling from West North America to Central America for spicy winters
Just had to point out the fun these hidden party monsters are having all up and down the American continent.
Tldr: they get everywhere and the population grows super fast, smaller bodies of water may have issues with the boom before the population reaches equilibrium. Not an expert, just from Ohio, Lake Erie anecdote below. And I don't know if they displaced anything else to occupy this novel niche.
Zebra Mussels got into Lake Erie bunch a years ago and the population exploded so fast people were worried the colonies would block stuff, whole waterways by some estimates. But it turned out they were living off something in the water "that made the water cloudy and brown", idk pollutants or an algae thing? So after a few years there was less of that food source and the Zebra Mussel population found an equilibrium. There were issues, something about getting them off boats, so people were at work to protect infrastructure. Now Lake Erie is clearer and they just found those 40 circles on the bottom, there were some great headlines a week or two back, but they're just sinkholes, not alien structures, whomp whomp