short eared owl – Page 8 – Feathered Photography

A Resurgence Of Short-eared Owls In The West?

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!

Montana Short-eared Owl In Flight

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.

Short-eared Owl On An Interesting Wooden Fence Post (and some thoughts on natural perches)

I suppose I can be a bit of a snob when it comes to the perches my birds choose.

A War Of Wills With A Short-eared Owl And I Won

I have a stubborn streak that occasionally gets me into trouble but every once in a while it pays off.

Red-naped Sapsucker Removing Wood Chips And Fecal Sac From Nest Cavity (+ a barbed wire owl update)

Sapsuckers perform some interesting behaviors during nesting season and the pair I photographed three days ago in the Uinta Mountains was no exception.

Young Short-eared Owl Learning To Hunt From Perches

Short-eared Owls often hunt from perches instead of on the wing and it’s a technique that must be learned.

Short-eared Owl – An Image Can Be Cropped Deceptively

Creative cropping of an image can sometimes have more negative effects than positive ones.

Short-eared Owl Siblings Parallaxing (and an update on the owl hung up on barbed wire)

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.

Another Nasty Encounter Between An Owl And A Barbed Wire Fence

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.