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<\/a><\/p>\nMale Short-eared Owl with a vole for the family<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n Red Rock Lakes NWR is simply a wonderful spot on this ol’ earth.\u00a0 Located in SW Montana about halfway between Yellowstone National Park on the East and Interstate 15 on the west, it lies in a beautiful high elevation valley and the setting is stunning.\u00a0 It’s not for the faint of heart though as the weather holds many potentially nasty\u00a0surprises and the access to the refuge is primitive at best.\u00a0 But that’s one of the things I love about Red Rock.\u00a0 \u00a0 In late June we had the place mostly to ourselves, which is\u00a0ideal for me.\u00a0 \u00a0 Coyotes howling, other \u00a0mammals \u00a0in abundance, birds plentiful, wildflowers galore, spectacular mountain scenery, amazing sunrises and sunsets, weather surprises, bad roads to limit visitation, isolation and especially those incredible Short-eared Owls.\u00a0\u00a0 I love this place!\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Female at the nest with one of two youngsters<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n On our second day there we found a pair of nesting Short-eared Owls with two youngsters.\u00a0 The nest was\u00a0at the base of a sagebrush within a few feet of a road.\u00a0 I have a (very unscientific) theory as to why these birds would make their nest so close\u00a0to a road with regular traffic.\u00a0\u00a0 Coyotes are very common on the refuge – we heard them howling often and would see them but they were seldom close to any road.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0They seem to avoid roads\u00a0whenever possible.\u00a0\u00a0 A nest on the ground would be very vulnerable to coyote predation.\u00a0 So I wonder if the choice to build the nest so close to the road was a deliberate one, giving the nest some protection from coyotes.\u00a0<\/p>\n The female and youngsters were often buried deep in the nest so I couldn’t see them, but one sunny morning the female and one baby came out far enough for the photo above.\u00a0\u00a0These owls were obviously very acclimated to\u00a0vehicles and never seemed disturbed by them.\u00a0 All of my photographs of these\u00a0owls were\u00a0taken from within my pickup while it was parked on the road.\u00a0 I never approached the\u00a0birds on foot or even got out of my vehicle.\u00a0 I would never risk disturbing nesting birds, of any species.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The male approaching the nest with breakfast<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n The female spent nearly all her time in the nest with the owlets while the male hunted voles (small rodents resembling mice).\u00a0\u00a0I could\u00a0often see him hunting close to the ground and usually quite far away.\u00a0 As far as I could tell his prey was always voles.\u00a0\u00a0 He was an excellent hunter and would always follow the same pattern – capture vole, return to the vicinity of the nest while carrying the vole in his talons,\u00a0 land on one of several favorite perches\u00a0fairly close to the nest\u00a0for a few minutes,\u00a0 transfer the vole from talons to beak and then take off to deliver the vole to the female at the nest.\u00a0 As a result, most of my photos of these owls are of the male carrying a vole.\u00a0 In the photo above, he is approaching the nest.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Coming in for a landing on a favorite sagebrush perch<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n In this image, the male is approaching the perch (a sagebrush in this case) near the nest.\u00a0 Notice that the vole is carried in the owls left talon.\u00a0 In reviewing all of my images of the male with a vole I noticed that he always carried it in the left talon.\u00a0 Without exception.\u00a0 Which got me to thinking about “handedness” in raptors.\u00a0 In doing some research on the subject it seems that many raptors and parrots in particular show “handedness”.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The impatient female retrieving her meal<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n Once, and only once, did I see the female carry a vole in flight.\u00a0 The male had brought the vole to one of the nearby perches but he waited longer than usual to deliver the vole to the nest and the female became impatient so she flew the short distance to the male, retrieved the vole from him and flew back to the nest with it.\u00a0 In the image above she’s on her way back to the nest.\u00a0 Not until I got home and processed the image did I notice that the females brood patch is clearly visible in the shot.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The sagebrush flats hunting territory of the owls<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n The sagebrush flat in the foreground is the hunting territory of these owls.\u00a0 For most of the time we were there the light for flight photography was very challenging – mostly cloudy, especially over the mountains.\u00a0 However, when light would hit an owl in flight with the dark mountains as a backdrop it made for an excellent background in some of the images, as in the opening shot in this post.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n