From Israel Kacar
Ural owl
Sunday evening I get a call from a friend: Israel, there's an owl sitting in our bush, come quickly..."
Shortly before sunset, off I go - and there's an Ural owl (goosebumps included).
This species has not been seen in NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia) before... The location is not disclosed in this regard.
Original German Text
Habichtskauz
Sonntag abends bekomme ich einen Anruf von einem Freund: „Israel bei uns im Busch sitzt ne Eule komm schnell..." Kurz vor Sonnenuntergang zack los - und siehe da ein Habichtskauz (Gänsehaut inbegriffen) Diese Art wurde in NRW so noch nicht gesehen ... Der Standort wird diesbezüglich nicht bekannt gemacht!
Canon eos 90d mit Sigma 150-600 ISO 5000 200mm f9 1/150s
"Einen Vogel haben" (lit. to have/own a bird) idiom -> to 'have bats in the belfry' sometimes accompanied by the gesture of tapping the forehead or temple with the index finger.
Hm. 🤔
I wanted to see if I could get something funny in German even though I don't know any. I thought this phrase worked as it's literally "to have a bird", but I also thought it could work as "I'm going crazy right now looking at this rare owl!"
Either not many people here know German, or my joke didn't work. 😅
Nobody picked up on my other little sneaky thing either. This post was from a person named Israel, and I shared the Little Owl from Palestine post at the same time so it was Israel & Palestine, but nobody noticed. I thought it was clever... 🤪
My head canon is that "having a bird" being equated with being crazy comes from these old mechanical wind up clocks where a bird quite literally jumps out to announce the passing of a full hour:
I like your explanation better. Everything I find makes it sound much more literal, and I feel that is just too silly for old timey Germans.