It’s often a fool’s errand to assign motivation to unexplained bird behaviors so in this case I won’t make any claims. But I have to wonder if this young owl might have been experimenting with its eyesight.
Many of us despise the disastrous effects of barbed wire fences on birds and other wildlife and I share that view. But maybe it’s a more nuanced issue than some of us believe. Could it be that barbed wire fences have a more positive overall effect on some species than negative?
This past spring and early summer SEO’s were ubiquitous in the Promontory area (“Owl Alley”). It was the most dense and longest-lasting concentration of the species I’ve ever experienced…
How’s that for a convoluted, seemingly disjointed title? I’ll try to pull it all together as you proceed through the post.
In my experience Short-eared Owls have been few and far between in several western states for the entire nine years I’ve been photographing birds. Not so this year!
I’m finding a fair number of Short-eared Owls on this trip to Montana and like our birds in Utah they like to perch on and take off from fence posts. But this male actually took off from the ground.
I have a stubborn streak that occasionally gets me into trouble but every once in a while it pays off.
Short-eared Owls often hunt from perches instead of on the wing and it’s a technique that must be learned.
Creative cropping of an image can sometimes have more negative effects than positive ones.
Normally it’s my practice to avoid posting the same species two days in a row. But in celebration of the (unexpected) good news about the juvenile Short-eared Owl we rescued from barbed wire two days ago I decided to make an exception. After all, I think we all prefer our owls happy and acting normally rather than hanging from barbed wire and in despair.
Many readers will remember the Barn Owl I had to cut out of barbed wire last summer in Montana. At the time I only had a small, cheap and dull pair of wire cutters with me and the effort required to cut the thick double-stranded wire strained tendons in my arm that took several weeks to heal. So I invested in two new heavy-duty pairs of wire cutters to carry in my pickup in case I ever came across a similar situation again. It’s a darn good thing I did.
