{"id":133636,"date":"2023-04-10T04:56:13","date_gmt":"2023-04-10T10:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=133636"},"modified":"2023-04-10T05:19:17","modified_gmt":"2023-04-10T11:19:17","slug":"nesting-great-horned-owl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/10\/nesting-great-horned-owl\/","title":{"rendered":"Nesting Great Horned Owl"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only the second time I’ve photographed a nesting Great Horned Owl in a completely natural setting and it happened yesterday morning..<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In Great Horned Owls only the female incubates eggs and broods chicks so this bird is almost certainly a female. That belief was reinforced by my perception of her size. I never did see the male.<\/p>\n

She spent most of her time with her head down and her eyes closed (or nearly so) but when a squawking raven flew by it got her attention and that’s when I took this photo. Immediately after she relaxed again.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I was surprised when she stood up like this for a moment but her motivation soon became apparent. Only seconds after this photo was taken she took off to her left after prey. She landed less than 100′ from the nest and stayed there for less than 15 seconds before returning to the nest but I couldn’t tell if she had prey in her talons. If she did it was most likely a vole. And no, I didn’t get any takeoff, flight or landing shots that I like.<\/p>\n

When I’ve photographed nesting Great Horned Owls in the past, with only one exception their nest has always been in a nest box, old granary or other manmade structure, so finding this one in a completely natural setting was a delight.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: I won’t make my readers endure all the details (you’ve had to read them in the past, many times) but rest assured, this nesting owl was photographed ethically.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Only the second time I’ve photographed a nesting Great Horned Owl in a completely natural setting and it happened yesterday morning. (2 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133638,"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":[334,16,405,391],"tags":[547,137,159,230,311],"class_list":["post-133636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-photography-ethics","category-great-horned-owls-owls","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-bubo-virginianus","tag-female","tag-great-horned-owl","tag-nesting","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/great-horned-owl-6219-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-yLq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133636","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=133636"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133669,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133636\/revisions\/133669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}