Just A Shot That I Like… #17 – Short-eared Owl In Flight With A Vole In Its Beak

This is another image from my time with the Short-eared Owls at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.  This male was kept very busy hunting voles and feeding his mate and youngsters at the nest.   Typically I would see him hunting far off, dive for a vole, and if he was successful he’d occasionally eat the vole himself but most often he would return with it to a favorite perch in the vicinity of the nest – and without exception he would always carry the vole in his talons before he got to the perch (and always his left talon, but I covered that topic in another post). 

 1/1600, f/5.6, ISO 800, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc

However, just before (or just after) he took off from the perch to deliver the meal to his family he would always transfer the vole from his talons to his beak.  I have a theory as to why he did so. 

The nest was on the ground at the base of a sagebrush.  Whenever the male landed at the entrance to the nest with the vole the female would rush out and very aggressively grab the vole.  And I DO mean aggressively!  If I’d been him I’d have been afraid to get that close to her with food.  So the male would approach the nest very gingerly with the vole in his beak and drop it in front of him and quickly retreat as she rushed out.  I suspect it was easier for him to avoid a confrontation with her if he could quickly drop the vole in front of him rather than have her try to take it away from him while it was in his talons.  Just my theory…

It was actually quite comical to watch, especially because the male acted so timid around her.

Ron

*** A note about how I got this image – many folks see a photo of an owl with prey and assume it was baited and in far too many cases they’re absolutely right.  I just want to make the point once again that I do not bait – ever!  Nor do I do setups or call birds in with electronic devices or any other way.  And I don’t use stuffed raptors to lure other raptors into range of the camera.  At the risk of sounding self-righteous, in my opinion those methods are used by far too many photographers who portray themselves as nature photographers.  To my way of thinking, to do so isn’t ethical and in my opinion such practices produce images that are closer to studio or zoo photography than to nature photography.  Besides, those practices often put the birds at risk and no photograph is ever worth that.

Ok, I’m off of my soap box.

Ron