{"id":115092,"date":"2022-07-26T05:06:48","date_gmt":"2022-07-26T11:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=115092"},"modified":"2022-07-26T06:59:32","modified_gmt":"2022-07-26T12:59:32","slug":"short-eared-owl-fledgling-twisting-his-head-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/26\/short-eared-owl-fledgling-twisting-his-head-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Short-eared Owl Fledgling Twisting His Head Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or at least seeming to.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Early yesterday morning I had a surprise encounter with this fledgling Short-eared Owl on a woodpile. I’m referring to ‘him’ as a fledgling because he was still being cared for by at least one of his parents. He was in the deep shade of the woodpile that was strongly backlit so getting a shooting angle on him that didn’t have extremely bright and annoying sunlit areas in the background wasn’t easy.<\/p>\n

Over the years I’ve photographed countless young owls performing motion parallax with their heads in order to better estimate the distance and direction of something they’re seeing and\/or hearing. It’s a skill that must be learned to be good at it and young owls in particular practice it relentlessly. They move their heads from side to side, up and down, and sometimes rotate their heads a little or a lot. But until yesterday I’d never seen it done quite to this extreme.<\/p>\n

In order to ‘draw a bead’ on where the clicking sound from my camera was coming from he slowly rotated his head until it was almost completely upside down. That nearly black area above and between his eyes is actually his bill. Let that<\/em> sink in.<\/p>\n

When I stare at this photo for a short while my brain plays tricks on me. Sometimes it looks like his head is upside down (which it is) and then it’ll switch to the perception that it’s right side up, which of course distorts the shape of his head and his facial disc and makes it look like his head is attached to his body just above his wing, with only a stump where his head should be.<\/p>\n

And then I imagine myself trying to do the same thing with my head. I can hear my cervical vertebrae cracking just thinking about it.<\/p>\n

I spent quite a while with this youngster and one of his parents and took hundreds of photos of them. There’s an entire long and interesting story I want to tell about the encounter but that will have to wait until I’ve had time to go through my photos of them and do a lot of image processing.<\/p>\n

Hopefully it’ll be worth the wait.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Or at least seeming to.<\/p>\n

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