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!
Birds are always my focus but I enjoy photographing critters of all types. Early this month I spent a week camping near the Continental Divide between Montana and Idaho and during that time I was able to photograph a variety of mammals, large and small.
Relative size apparently makes no difference when birds are competing for nesting cavities. In this case the Northern Flickers are twelve times larger than the house wren (130 g vs 11 g).
Several weeks ago I presented this mystery to my readers because I was at a loss to figure it out myself. None of us found a logical explanation so on my latest Montana trip I decided to investigate a little more aggressively.
I sure do miss this woodpecker and its mate. I photographed them for parts of two breeding seasons in Clark County, Idaho but about a month ago some idiot chopped down their nest tree (the one in these images) and I haven’t seen the birds since.
I’ve returned home from my Montana/Idaho camping trip and overall the trip was spectacular but the good times were tempered by a nasty surprise on my first day there.
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