This was my original thought, that it could give something extra to look forward to, especially for those that want to contribute but don't know what they have to offer.

I was thinking about reaching out to the mods for the banner/thumbnail to go to the winner like you mention in the other comment.

The seeding I was thinking would be to break down the owls into:

Common owls - the ones we are most familiar with, Barn, Barred, Great Horned, Eagle, Screech, etc

Less common - ones you might be familiar with from coming here every day or if you live outside US or EU, the Australian owls, some if the more popular owls from posts like the Oriental Bay Owl and the Fish Owls

Exotic - some rare ones that people would never encounter by accident, but are very interesting looking. May be very limited to one island in the world or jungle owls in places hard to get to, or just may not have been featured on here yet.

I think this would give a chance to some of the less common owls to get a victory.

My only concern is some days, Tues and Wed, seen to be less active than the others and the weekends have the most activity so that makes scoring a little uneven. Even so, it's just for fun anyway.