Jan’s first go at a device was Quarterly Or and purpure, an owl argent maintaining in its claws an emerald vert. I had a look in the Ordinary and Armorial, the walloping great database of all heraldic registrations in the SCA, and discovered that this one is in conflict with some existing registrations, so Jan went on to redesign it. I’m putting the full detective story here so people can see the heraldic process in practice.
A recent precedent on the difference between types of birds reasons thus:
The end result of this is that there is still no difference granted for owls displayed vs. eagles displayed, but there now is a difference for type between owls close guardant and eagles/falcons/hawks close. In the future I will be more likely to grant difference between different types of birds when they are (a) different in period, (b) in a period posture, (c) drawn correctly, and (d) there is some visual difference. This also means that in the future I will be stricter about requiring that a bird be drawn with its defining attributes (i.e., a dove should have a tuft). Without the defining attributes, the bird may just be blazoned as “a bird.”
Meanwhile, the emerald is a maintained charge:
Small objects that are held by an animate charge are said to be maintained, such as a lion rampant maintaining a sword. Maintained charges are considered too small to count towards difference.
So we get a CD (Clear Difference) between owls close guardant and other birds, but nothing for the addition or removal of the emerald in the owl’s claws. Which means we’re sunk if we find another registration with an owl close guardant (the default posture) in the same colour, regardless of background, or on the same background, regardless of the owl’s colour. That’s pretty likely to conflict, given how many registrations exist:
Checking current registrations, we look at Bird – Whole – 1 – Close to dexter – Argent:
(Fieldless) An owl argent sustaining and perched upon an oak sprig fesswise fructed Or. One CD for the sustained (not maintained) oak sprig, and one for the field. Clear.
(Fieldless) On an owl argent a fleam gules. One CD for the field, one for the fleam. Clear.
Azure mullety, an owl and on a chief argent a recorder reversed azure. One CD for the field, one for the chief. Clear.
(And several others with owls and chiefs redacted to save time; all clear.)
Azure, an owl close, maintaining in its talons a tuft of wool pendant therefrom a drop spindle argent. Once CD for the field, nothing for the spindle. Conflict.
Per bend sable and azure, an owl between three lozenges argent. One CD for the field, one CD for the lozenges. Clear.
Sable, an owl argent. One CD for the field, nothing for the emerald. Conflict. And that’s a forty-year-old registration, so it’s very unlikely we could get permission to conflict.
So sadly, this device is in conflict with multiple others, and can’t be registered as it is.
So what’s the next step? We go back to brainstorming, and come up with more ideas. One possibility would be to have two owls and two emeralds in some arrangement, or perhaps a semy (strewn field) of emeralds. We will need to check these for conflict as well, of course.