{"id":107532,"date":"2022-02-13T05:30:03","date_gmt":"2022-02-13T12:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=107532"},"modified":"2022-02-13T05:30:03","modified_gmt":"2022-02-13T12:30:03","slug":"superb-owl-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/13\/superb-owl-sunday\/","title":{"rendered":"Superb Owl Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seven photos of six owl species.<\/p>\n

I’ve never been one to follow the crowd. I never, ever use the word “cool” as an expression of approval or admiration, never have and never will. I haven’t and almost certainly never will play the web-based word game “Wordle”, especially since it’s now been hacked and all the answers are out. And in the past I’ve never participated in the annual flooding of the internet with owl photos under the title “Superb Owl Sunday” on Super Bowl Sunday.<\/p>\n

But when CNN thinks the Superb Owl Sunday phenomenon is such a sensation it deserves a major article about it<\/a><\/span><\/span> I decided to throw in the towel and join this particular crowd. I’ll use my love of owls as my excuse.<\/p>\n

These are photos of the six owl species I’ve photographed over the years. I’ve posted each of them in the past but for many of them it’s been a very long time so most current blog followers will have never seen, or likely won’t remember seeing, at least some of them.<\/p>\n

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A fat and fuzzy Great Horned Owl fledgling in the midst of an enthusiastic yawn. Early one morning on the family farm in Montana I found this youngster basking in the warmth of the rising sun on one of the very old granaries built in the early 30’s.<\/p>\n

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The only Northern Pygmy Owl I’ve ever photographed. I watched as this bird flew down from the treetops in Montana’s Centennial Mountains, captured a fat little rodent and carried it back to a branch high above me. The shooting angle is steep and the background bright but it’s the best I have of the species.<\/p>\n

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A frustrated Barn Owl at Farmington Bay WMA. The owl had just dived into the snow after a vole that it missed. Whenever I see this photo it always makes me wonder of the bird was looking around to make sure no one noticed its embarrassing predicament.<\/p>\n

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I’ve only photographed Long-eared Owls a couple of times and this bird is one of them. It appeared to be using this rusty old fence post as a hunting perch. The ice and snow in the background combined with less than ideal light made for difficult shooting conditions but I did the best I could.<\/p>\n

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A young Burrowing Owl in flight. I actually got three flight shots of this owl but it was banded and I’m not particularly fond of jewelry on my birds. I chose to post this one out of the three because its left wing is hiding the shiny metal band.<\/p>\n

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OK, you want a little competition on Super Bowl Sunday? How about some fighting owls?<\/p>\n

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These two male Short-eared Owls in Montana’s Centennial Valley were really going at it as they fought over territory and breeding rights with a female owl that was watching their performance. The owl on the bottom had been on the ground when the other owl flew in to attack. At the last second the owl on the ground would jump up, turn upside down and present its talons in defense.<\/p>\n

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They did it repeatedly which gave me multiple chances to capture some pretty amazing aerial flighting postures. For obvious reasons, this one was is my favorite.<\/p>\n

If you’re a fan I hope you enjoy the spectacle of the Super Bowl festivities and the game itself. I hope it’s a good one but in my view the game has little chance of being more entertaining, or competitive, than fighting owls.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Seven photos of six owl species.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107539,"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":[344,334,365,405,2781,3025,356],"tags":[45,62,6179,159,3062,3024,279,6177,6178,6180],"class_list":["post-107532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barn-owls","category-birds","category-burrowing-owls","category-great-horned-owls-owls","category-long-eared-owls","category-northern-pygmy-owls","category-short-eared-owls","tag-barn-owl","tag-burrowing-owl","tag-fighting-owls","tag-great-horned-owl","tag-long-eared-owl","tag-northern-pygmy-owl","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-super-bowl-sunday","tag-superb-owl-sunday","tag-wordle"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/short-eared-owl-7759-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-rYo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107532","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=107532"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107568,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107532\/revisions\/107568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}