From Mal Whitehead
Early morning in Central Victoria and a first time sighting of a Barking Owl in the open. The smaller honeyeaters were "going off".
After a while the owl flew to a more typical perch in dense foliage.
Ninox connivens.
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Absolutely beautiful bird.
I assume a lot of nature photography is trust- and reputation-based, but are there any other checks to keep generated images from taking over here?
Edit: I dont mean to imply that this image is generated! The question is completely irrelevant to the picture, but I'm a silly goose with no impulse control when a question pops into my head.
It's a very good question.
I used to share some of the AI content I found being passed off and how I knew it was fake, but with Lemmy being very anti-AI, people didn't even really want to see it used as a demonstration.
The bulk of my content comes from wildlife rehabbers. I'm a rehab volunteer myself, so I know rehabs don't have the free time to make stuff up! 😄 Rehabs and research papers are the things that interest me both, so I can be pretty confident in what I see or read as there's no shortage of people that will call out BS as it's more targeted at people working with or adjacent to raptors.
The photography stuff can get tricky. I have a lot of photographers I've followed for a few years now and I know I can trust their work. A number of them travel in herds to follow bird sightings and I can get the same owl from different angles or in different locations as folks photograph it together or on different days. For people new to me, I have a really hard time trusting anything that the photographer didn't put a watermark on. If you're sitting out in the bad weather for hours to get a shot, I'd assume you'd want your name on it. No watermark makes me cautious it could be generated or stolen. Also, after viewing thousands probably over 10,000 photos of owls by this point and having been around enough of them, if I feel some details looks off about the photo, I just skip it to be safe. There's no shortage of images I can be 99% confident about, so I don't want to risk credibility. I'm no expert, I'm just an enthusiastic hobbyist, so I can't swear everything has been real, but to my best belief it has been.
I'm here to entertain you guys with great owl content, but it's things I'm sharing with you on my genuine personal interest in learning more about these amazing birds. If I go chasing fake stuff, it's wasting my time just as much or more than yours, and I don't want to do that to either of us! There are so many good true things, there's no need to fake it, in my opinion.
Perfect answer. Thank you for everything you do for wildlife and for this community!
It is my pleasure. I want everyone to enjoy all the posts and you're always free to ask me any questions about what you see.