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
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… 🤪
We’re not that smart. Sorry, you have to put up with us🫣
You guys teach me plenty. Languages, memes, various nerd stuff I haven’t gotten around to…
I know German and thought it was funny. :D
A friend of mine studied Biology and had “Gut zu Vögeln” in her Tinder profile. Which translates as “Nice to birds” but also “Nice to fuck” at the same time. German is a strange language.
Oh, good! It’s fun to try to see how other languages work. It’s really all the silly and dirty things we actually want to learn when we study languages anyway, isn’t it? 😆
I googled gut zu völgen to see what depraved things I’d find, but it was surprisingly wholesome looking. I did find this German language blog post that talked about how there are actually a ton of of usage cases for birds or bird related words, including the one you mentioned. What a versatile word it is in German!
That funny and informative blog post was really worth reading.
There was so much packed into it and they really made it enjoyable to read. I was able to follow along with all the examples, and nothing felt confusing or intimidating. I really liked it!
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: