Flickr Has a Whole Huge Group Devoted to Photographing the Virtual Fowls of Second Life

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Bella Blackheart recently posted “Family Portrait” to Fowl Deeds, a Second Life Flickr group with nearly 300 followers devoted to photographing “chickens and their eggs, geese, ducks, swans and turkeys” by the thousands. The kind of birds you find on farms and in people’s backyards in some municipalities, geese are not my favorite fowl. I like them just fine flying in the air, but  on the ground, these are the bullies of the barnyard. If you have a goose, you don’t need a guard dog. But here we have a family of five. 

By the way, this image above is an example of the Rule of Odds. The weird thing is as viewers, we spend more time looking at pictures with an odd-numbered group because we’re busy trying to pair them off and we can’t. This makes pictures with odd numbers appeal to us more. We like them better. 

For more Fowl deeds caught on screen, click here:

Lorrie Agapi gives us just one swan. One may be the loneliest number, but it’s also odd. However, if you look more closely that single swan in the light is not alone. There are three swans. I love the darkness in this picture, the slow, meandering river. The lily pads are a sign this river takes its own sweet time, making it a happy place for hungry birds. 

Valentina Ametsak presents us with six birds flying, silhouetted against the sun. Even though six is an even number, this floc is asymmetrical because one is in the lead. The formation has the effect of an odd number because we are trying to complete the shape. There’s one missing! This is how an even number can be perceived as odd and have the same effect of drawing us in because we see something is missing. “Thinking Out Loud” is the perfect name as it makes us think. 

Panda Banana 🐼🍌 gives us the irreverent “Before and After” which seems to have two meanings as he posts a link to the “before” picture on his Twitter while posting the “after” to Flickr, but I think he’s counting his chickens, before and after. In a macabre way, this is another group of odd numbers, the third chicken is in the bucket. Panda is always so full of fun.

Bᴏᴜᴅɪᴄᴄᴀ Amat shared “Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost” and it’s stunning. It looks like a painting by one of those Dutch masters with its lighting and that romantic sky. I love how the geese make a triangle around her in their odd-number glory. This is simply extraordinary which is what one expects from Boudicca.

Fowl Deeds is another of Siobhán Muintir’s many Flickr groups devoted to the fauna of Second Life. It has only 274 members, but they are busy, sending more than 1800 pictures to the group. It’s well-managed. There are no stray pictures of erotica, fashion blog posts, or spam. This group doesn’t even have sparrows or starlings or red-bellied woodpeckers. 

All images copyright their listed creator

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Cajsa’s Choices is devoted to unique, artistic, and innovative virtual world-based images and screenshots that showcase the medium as an art form and Second Life as a creative platform. (Generally not images that fit on this Bingo card.)  

Cajsa Lilliehook is a seventeen year resident of Second Life, where she owned a photo studio, spent several years as a DJ at The Velvet, and for her first SL job, cleaned up prim trash. She co-founded and runs the It’s Only Fashion blog with her best friend Gidge Uriza. She also has a book review blog, Tonstant Weader Reviews and a cooking blog, Single Serving Recipes. She spends a lot of time researching and reporting on Republican sexual predators. In her first life, she is a retired grassroots leader who has worked for economic and social justice issues most of her life. She is also the minion of a cat named Nora.