{"id":102087,"date":"2021-09-07T06:22:31","date_gmt":"2021-09-07T12:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=102087"},"modified":"2021-09-07T06:22:31","modified_gmt":"2021-09-07T12:22:31","slug":"great-horned-owls-and-bittersweet-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/07\/great-horned-owls-and-bittersweet-memories\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Horned Owls And Bittersweet Memories"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a huge soft spot for owls and old wood but these photos carry some bittersweet baggage. I’ve told parts of this story before but this time I’ll be telling it from a different perspective. First, a review of the basics. If you already know them feel free to skip ahead.<\/p>\n

I grew up with my first cousin Ken Dudley on our adjoining Montana farms. As adults, after I moved away but returned often, we became even closer – he was truly like the brother I never had. In 2006 when Ken was in his mid-50’s he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given only a short time to live. At that point I had a decision to make. Due to circumstances beyond my control (mostly job-related) I could go to Montana to visit with him before he died or attend his funeral but not both.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ken and I mutually decided that we’d prefer to spend time together while he was alive so in December of 2006 I flew to Montana and spent most of a week visiting with him in the hospital. He died on January 30, 2007, about a month after I returned home. I did not attend his funeral.<\/em><\/p>\n

Several months after he died I unexpectedly received a monetary gift from Ken that allowed me to finally purchase my ideal bird lens. Ken knew I lusted after that lens, in part because he knew how frustrated I was trying to get quality photos of the resident Great Horned Owls on the farm that we both loved so much. He never told me as much but I’m sure it was his intention that I use part of his gift to purchase the lens.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ken was cremated and wanted his ashes spread over the farm he loved so much so family decided to have a celebration of his life in mid-August of 2007 with his family and closest friends attending. I was a teacher and had that summer off so there was no way I was going to miss the celebration.<\/em><\/p>\n

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On the morning of Ken’s life celebration I reconnoitered the old farm granaries looking for owls. ‘Ken’s lens’ was heavy to carry and photographing owls wasn’t the primary purpose of my visit to the farm so while I was exploring the granaries that morning all I had with me was my much smaller and lighter zoom lens when I found this owl in one of the granary cutouts. I believe this owl is the female of the mated pair that had been resident on the farm for years.<\/p>\n

I was delighted to find her but even though I was quite close to her the photos I got that morning with my smaller lens just weren’t quite up to snuff.<\/p>\n

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That afternoon and evening we had Ken’s life celebration with about 25 of his family and closest friends attending. Here a small group of them, including Ken’s dog Havoc, are waiting for the plane (piloted by a family friend) carrying Ken’s ashes to pass over the farm from the west. The rest of the attendees are with me as I took the photograph higher on the hill behind me.<\/p>\n

I was disappointed that it was a hazy (smoky?) day. Normally in this view we could clearly see the mountains of Glacier National Park, including iconic Chief Mountain<\/a><\/span><\/span>, in the background. But the farthest we can see in this photo is Horse Thief Mesa on the upper horizon.<\/p>\n

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Finally the plane appeared from out of the haze.<\/p>\n

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Here we can see the arm of Ken’s sister Teri hanging out of the plane’s window as she releases Ken’s ashes over the farm.\u00a0We celebrated that evening with drinks, good food and good friends as we reminisced about Ken’s incredible life.<\/p>\n

The next day, the day before I left to drive home to Utah, you know I had to look for owls again and this time I’d be using my new lens.<\/p>\n

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I found only one – this time I believe it was the resident male. The almost omnipresent Montana wind was blowing and he was much more shy than the female so I probably spent 15 minutes ‘sneaking’ up on him using every stalking skill I possessed. It was obvious that he was about to fly off or scamper back into the pitch blackness of the granary but in the end he actually stuck so I was finally able to…<\/p>\n

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maneuver myself into a position where I could see more of him. These are my first owl photos taken with ‘Ken’s lens’.<\/p>\n

But it was a bittersweet experience because something seemed wrong, somehow off a little. Here I was, on Ken’s farm with Ken’s owls and using the lens that he’d provided for me but there was no Ken. In the past Ken had always been there – always. I had never thanked him for his gift and I never could, at least not personally,<\/p>\n

R.I.P. Ken Dudley. And thank you.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a huge soft spot for owls and old wood but these photos carry some bittersweet baggage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,361,405,1493],"tags":[547,159,3423,4031,5562],"class_list":["post-102087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-family-farm-in-northwest-montana","category-great-horned-owls-owls","category-montana-favorite-locations","tag-bubo-virginianus","tag-great-horned-owl","tag-ken-dudley","tag-montana-farm","tag-spreading-ashes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/great-horned-owl-1792-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-qyz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102087"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102113,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102087\/revisions\/102113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}