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Owls in Towels

owlsintowels.org

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Re: Owls in Towels

#12

Post by aaron695 »

josh-sematic wrote: post #2

I love this. The web used to be a place filled to the brim with people making sites about stuff dedicated to some niche thing that brought them joy. Glad to see that vibe still survives out there. Edit: to be clear, this site is connected with an organization and probably exists to help promote it, but it still gives that “look, this is cool!” passion to me.

[dead]

Re: Owls in Towels

#14

Post by imposterr »

roughly wrote: post #3

This is a delight! This site is a great reminder that almost everyone visiting Hacker News has a set of skills which can be put to beneficial use for causes you care about - this is a small, simple, cheap site (and I mean that in a good way!) that attracts attention, awareness, and donations to something the author cares about. It’s easy for us, but it’s magic for most people. Don’t let your tech industry imposter sy…

I've stopped using the word "cheap" to describe situations like this as the word has too many negative connotations. I tend towards "inexpensive", "cost-effective", or "low-cost". I find it better describes my intent to describe something as not costing much but not speaking to poor quality which I feel like the word "cheap" has come to imply.

Re: Owls in Towels

#15

Post by abstractbill »

ttoinou wrote: post #9

Do you think this kind of internet nuggets will still exist in our soon to be post-AI world ? We won't be able to know who sent a real vs. a fake picture

Honestly my first reaction to seeing these photos was to wonder if they were AI-generated (I'm not suggesting they are, I just have that response quite often now).

Re: Owls in Towels

#17

Post by hungmung »

I've had to do this several times, it's really the best way to handle birds and bats that get into your home -- just toss the towel on top of it and pick it up. Another trick if a bird flies into your window and stuns itself, you can pick it up with a towel and place it in a (closed) cardboard box outside in the shade so they can recover without a ton of sensory input/stressors, you just have to make sure predators don't get into it.

(If you ever have to relocate a bat, don't just leave them on the ground, they can't take off from there and will almost certainly die. Put them in a tree or somewhere higher up)

Re: Owls in Towels

#18

Post by pfdietz »

fallinghawks wrote: post #13

Now do Hawks in Socks! (Nylon stockings are commonly used when transporting a wild bird for an hour or two).

I went to a presentation on the reintroduction of the bald eagle to New York state. When handling young eagles, the presenter (then much younger) found the best way to immobilize them was stuff them into the leg of her pants (not when she was wearing the pants, mind you.)

She had to constantly do this as they fledged, since they couldn't get back up to the platform where the nest was. In the wild, the parents would continue to feed the young after they left the nest but before they could fly, but that wasn't practical for her to do.

The process of raising raptors from eggs is called "hacking", so it's entirely appropriate for this site. Normally done on hawks, this project showed it would work with eagles too.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hack#dictionary-e...

Re: Owls in Towels

#19

Post by jxf »

roughly wrote: post #3

This is a delight! This site is a great reminder that almost everyone visiting Hacker News has a set of skills which can be put to beneficial use for causes you care about - this is a small, simple, cheap site (and I mean that in a good way!) that attracts attention, awareness, and donations to something the author cares about. It’s easy for us, but it’s magic for most people. Don’t let your tech industry imposter sy…

This is a beautiful demonstration of how technology can be simple and powerful for amplifying a message at the same time -- no matter the silliness or seriousness of the message. Very "Old Web" vibes.

Anyone who's worked on random enterprise CRUD REST apps earlier in their career (myself included) knows the pain of wishing that you were doing something a little more helpful or positive for humanity.

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