Or at least seeming to.
1/1250, f/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in
Early yesterday morning I had a surprise encounter with this fledgling Short-eared Owl on a woodpile. I’m referring to ‘him’ as a fledgling because he was still being cared for by at least one of his parents. He was in the deep shade of the woodpile that was strongly backlit so getting a shooting angle on him that didn’t have extremely bright and annoying sunlit areas in the background wasn’t easy.
Over the years I’ve photographed countless young owls performing motion parallax with their heads in order to better estimate the distance and direction of something they’re seeing and/or hearing. It’s a skill that must be learned to be good at it and young owls in particular practice it relentlessly. They move their heads from side to side, up and down, and sometimes rotate their heads a little or a lot. But until yesterday I’d never seen it done quite to this extreme.
In order to ‘draw a bead’ on where the clicking sound from my camera was coming from he slowly rotated his head until it was almost completely upside down. That nearly black area above and between his eyes is actually his bill. Let that sink in.
When I stare at this photo for a short while my brain plays tricks on me. Sometimes it looks like his head is upside down (which it is) and then it’ll switch to the perception that it’s right side up, which of course distorts the shape of his head and his facial disc and makes it look like his head is attached to his body just above his wing, with only a stump where his head should be.
And then I imagine myself trying to do the same thing with my head. I can hear my cervical vertebrae cracking just thinking about it.
I spent quite a while with this youngster and one of his parents and took hundreds of photos of them. There’s an entire long and interesting story I want to tell about the encounter but that will have to wait until I’ve had time to go through my photos of them and do a lot of image processing.
Hopefully it’ll be worth the wait.
Ron
I love this! I can’t wait to hear more about the “headless owl”. Are you the local schoolmaster telling his tale?
April, I gave up the schoolmaster business 18 years ago!
I disagree, you are still teaching, just another platform.
❤️
Amazing! Stunned, surprise laugh was the first reaction when I opened this post and started to scroll down. What a beautiful creature! Look forward to the expanded story of this encounter.
Thanks, Carolyn. It’ll be a few days but it should be coming.
Oh my. Oh my, oh my, oh my.
I am soooooo looking forward to the rest of the story but delighted in this one. And am envious. Of the owl’s flexibility and of you for being there…
It was a fun demonstration to be witness to, EC – that’s for sure.
Wowzers! That’s enough to make a chiropractor cry. What a phenomenal adaptation that kind of flexibility is!
Definitely looking forward to the upcoming encounter story. Please protect your own back and neck in the meantime. 💜
Thanks, Marty. I’ve been pretty protective of my back for some time now. Not sure how much good it’s doing though.
Count me among those astounded by this photograph! Truly, when I first looked at the picture (and only having read “SEO fledgling” in the title), I thought this was simply the oddest looking owl I had ever seen…and perhaps even worse, with a deformed beak. So what a relief to read (and then see) that it’s a parallax view—so much fun! And better his neck than mine. 😉 Can’t wait for the rest of the story!
“And better his neck than mine”
Damn, isn’t that the truth, Chris!
Makes my neck hurt – I’m proud to get 45 degrees turn, nothing like the 180 of this little magician.
Kent, and that’s only a turn. This is rotation which is much more difficult.
I’ve seen a rotation of over 90° several times from young owls but this is rather extreme. I’ve seen this once in an adult Red-tailed Hawk that was perched and wanted a better look at something flying overhead. A higher density of cones is in the top of their retina which gets images from below when in flight. Turning upside-down makes what’s overhead sharper. But I don’t think this is the case for owls so this is indeed very strange looking. Makes my neck hurt. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Dan, I’ve seen it several times with red-tails but never this extreme.
Owl yoga asanas…do not try this at home. 🙂
That’s for sure. You’ll break something.
Wonderful, thank you.
Great photograph and a good chuckle.
Thanks, Kathryn.
Spectacular, Ron! Simply Spectacular! I’ll be revisiting this one for a long time.
“I’ll be revisiting this one for a long time”
I probably will too, Diane.
Incredible, and the longer I stare at it the more confused I get. What really interests me too is that had I just glanced at this photo I would have just been fascinated by the intensity of the eyes and moved on never realizing what I had just seen.
Then I saved the photo into my photos and rotated it and sure enough there is the upside down face looking right at me. I did then delete the photo Ron.
Excellent photo and very observing of you to realize what you had seen. Looking forward to more of this in the future.
I rotated the photo too, Everett. Pretty interesting to look at it that way.
Holy cow. I mean holy owl. Get thee back there with an exorcist. And with a portable x-ray to see if he has any cervical vertebrae. You’re Owl photographs are just the best.
Thanks very much, Lyle. Owls have 14 cervical vertebrae compared to our 7 so they have the advantage. But still…
TOO funny! 🙂 Amazing what they can do (and we would mess ourselves up trying)! I had to look closely to figure it out – at 1st glance it seemed he was just leaning forward! 😉 Looking forward to more of the saga. 🙂
Power lines across the creek full of swallows this morning – pretty early to be “gathering” for migration but I’m also sure there weren’t THAT many nesting at the bridge this year either. Hmmmmmm
Judy, I saw a very large flock of Cliff Swallows about a week ago in the mountains. It must not be too early.
Strange year – see blackbirds are starting to flock up also……
Omygosh ! I didn’t think that degree of turn was possible ! Also, I’d thought of
parallax helping with visual spotting, but not so much in hearing– but that’s what the facial disc feathers help accomplish, too, right ? It’s a rare day when
I don’t learn something from your blog– thanks !
Kris, it’s my understanding that motion parallax helps with both.
Wow!
😁
My goodness. My neck hurts, too. And those voles don’t stand a chance!
“those voles don’t stand a chance”
Cathy, yesterday I actually saw two voles run across the road in front of me. That’s something I rarely see and it’s an indication of a plentiful food source for the owls this year.
That is absolutely amazing. I love your owl pictures. Great shot in challenging lighting conditions!
Ken
Thank you, Ken.
Every day your posts are more than worth it. Whether you’ve teased us, and made us wait, or not. Whether there’s one shot or a series, a little text or a lot, something new or something similar to what you’ve posted before… it’s all wonderful. I don’t comment often, but I do appreciate your work every day. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Cheryl. Sometimes I don’t have much choice but to “tease” but do I try to keep it to a minimum.