{"id":102258,"date":"2021-09-12T05:59:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-12T11:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=102258"},"modified":"2021-09-12T05:59:00","modified_gmt":"2021-09-12T11:59:00","slug":"a-couple-of-short-eared-owls-with-two-versions-of-each-photo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/12\/a-couple-of-short-eared-owls-with-two-versions-of-each-photo\/","title":{"rendered":"A Couple Of Short-eared Owls With Two Versions Of Each Photo"},"content":{"rendered":"

And a bit of a mystery.<\/p>\n

Both photos were taken in the same general area of Box Elder County in June of 2017 but they were taken five days apart.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This bird was unusually approachable, especially for a Short-eared Owl. “He’ was perched on an ancient fence post directly across the remote road from me so I was close enough that I felt compelled to remove my teleconverter in case I got lucky enough for a takeoff shot (I didn’t).<\/p>\n

I believe he was as ‘sticky’ as he was because he was hunting the grasses directly below him so intently he didn’t want to be distracted. At one point…<\/p>\n

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a cow passing within a few feet behind him didn’t even warrant a glance. He just continued to hunt the grasses below his perch (I’ve posted this photo before).<\/p>\n

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A vertical crop of the first photo allows a closer look at the owl and a slightly better look at one of his ear tufts that in this species are completely hidden more often than not. I think I actually prefer the vertical composition.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

A couple of things caught my eye about this second SEOW. First there’s the pastel colors in the background. Love’m or hate’m I rarely get pastel colors in my backgrounds so they definitely got my attention.<\/p>\n

I’m also slightly confused about the eye of this bird. Initially I thought I could see both the upper eyelid and the nictitating membrane which appeared to be drawn down over the upper half of his eye. But then I remembered that in my other photos of this species showing their nictitans the membrane originates in the inside corner of the eye rather than toward the top of the eye.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

So I investigated with a much tighter crop of the same photo which I believe shows that what I thought was the nictitans is actually a shadow cast by the partially closed upper eyelid.<\/p>\n

However if that’s the case, and I believe it is, the shadow of the upper eyelid should have prevented that distinct catch light in the eye which is (presumably) a reflection of the sun.<\/p>\n

So like I said, I’m slightly confused but it certainly isn’t the first time.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

And a bit of a mystery.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102261,"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":[5,334,356],"tags":[35,689,822,515,5936,279,311],"class_list":["post-102258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-box-elder-county","tag-ear-tufts","tag-nictitating-membrane","tag-pastel-colors","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/short-eared-owl-9493-big-crop-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-qBk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102258","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=102258"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102294,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102258\/revisions\/102294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}