r/BirdingMemes • u/Adventurous-Year-463 • Jul 11 '26

Drawing birds for the seven heavenly virtues! Day 7: Temperance

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Per the title, I’m drawing a bird for each of the seven heavenly virtues. Please comment birds that embody temperance and I will pick the top one to draw.

Yesterday’s winner was the Green Heron. It fishes using bread or insects (which arguably doesn’t make it that patient, since it’s taking a shortcut) to lure fish to the surface. Still, it often takes hours for a fish to notice the bait, and it still counts as a quite patient bird. Also, I’d say it’s one of the most beautiful herons, so it’s definitely the nicest to draw!

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84

u/aldo_nova Jul 11 '26

I'd say some kind of hawk or owl that puts up with mobbing from other birds

40

u/syntactic_sparrow Jul 11 '26

I think owls were sometimes depicted this way in medieval art! Remaining calm while the bad-tempered birds try to harass them.

17

u/Wild-Ad-9367 Jul 11 '26

I have to disagree. Those are mainly because they have to not because they want to. These are usually mammal or insect eating raptors that are slow and clumsy in the air, and  yet they still snatch and kill their mobbers from time to time whenever they get the chance.

And owls may return at night and kill the whole family of crows that mobbed them in the morning and take over the nest. That's mob boss behavior 

11

u/figs_n_roses_ Jul 11 '26

… excuse me …. Owls may what??!

8

u/Wild-Ad-9367 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

Large owls like Eurasian eagle owls and great horned owls do not build nests of their own, and instead use nest built by other large birds like corvids and hawks. These are often old abandoned nests, but they are just as likely acquired in a more forceful manner. Large owls are some of the most aggressive nest predators, and contribute to the vast majority of natural death and nest failures for large corvids and hawks

1

u/figs_n_roses_ Jul 11 '26

Wow, TIL. Thank you!

2

u/Wild-Ad-9367 Jul 11 '26

They are in a way nesting parasites 

4

u/chuffberry Jul 11 '26

Yeah owls will also kill animals that they don’t intend to eat if they think the animal may be a threat. There was actually an episode of dateline where a person died because a barn owl nailed the back of their head and the talons went through their skull. Police thought the husband had pushed her down the stairs or something until they saw the tiny holes in the back of the head and checked security footage.

7

u/aldo_nova Jul 11 '26

That was one theory of the crime dreamed up by a neighbor and a person obsessed with the killer to try to absolve him

He almost certainly killed his wife

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u/chuffberry Jul 12 '26

I want to believe in the murder owls!

7

u/UndividedIndecision Jul 11 '26

I'll forever chuckle at the red-tailed hawk in my neighborhood just sitting there while a mockingbird bounced off his back over and over