{"id":134788,"date":"2023-04-27T06:01:12","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T12:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=134788"},"modified":"2023-04-27T08:33:37","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T14:33:37","slug":"nesting-great-horned-owl-there-are-chicks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/27\/nesting-great-horned-owl-there-are-chicks\/","title":{"rendered":"Nesting Great Horned Owl – There Are Chicks!"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a little home decorating thrown in for good measure.<\/p>\n

It had been 12 days since I’d checked up on the nesting female Great Horned Owl I’ve posted photos of recently, so yesterday morning I decided to pay her another visit to see if there was any evidence of chicks in the nest. If there were any, perhaps they’d grown enough to be seen over the lip of the nest.<\/p>\n

Another goal was to arrive at the nest before sunrise, which is no small order since it takes me several hours to get there (no, I don’t need any sleep…). When the very warm light soon after sunrise hits the red rocks behind the nest, the reds are just too much – to the point that they overwhelm any photos I take. The downside to pre-sunrise photos is that I’d have no shutter speed to speak of. At my focal length, avoiding soft shots was going to be a big challenge.<\/p>\n

So, today’s post is more about the charm of baby owls than it is about high-quality photos.<\/p>\n

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1\/320, 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

It was still half-dark when I arrived and found the female perched on a rock near the nest, so even at ISO 1600 and f\/5.6 I only had a shutter speed of 1\/320. She wasn’t close to me, which only added to the difficulty of getting sharp shots. This was the sharpest photo I got while she was perched there, which wasn’t very long.<\/p>\n

I figured she’d eventually take off toward the nest and when it happened I wasn’t planning to even attempt flight shots at this shutter speed. But when she launched, my bird photographer’s instincts took over with…<\/p>\n

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1\/320, 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

fully predictable results – soft flight shots. I’m only including this one because I’m actually surprised she’s as sharp as she is at this shutter speed. In my other flight shots she was a blurry mess.<\/p>\n

When she arrived at the nest and I finally got a good look at it I was…<\/p>\n

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1\/400, 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

thrilled to see parts of at least three owlets, with four birds “all in a row” like the proverbial pretty maids of nursery rhyme (and Joe Walsh<\/a><\/span><\/span>) fame.<\/p>\n

Clutch size in GHOW’s ranges from 1–4 eggs (very rarely 5, most commonly 2) so three babies raised to this size is doing pretty darn well and it’s feasible that there were more that I couldn’t see. This photo is the best look I got at three of them in a single image. At times I could see the owlet on the left a little better than this but in those shots the baby in the middle had hunkered back down.<\/p>\n

This female owl (I still haven’t seen the male) impresses me. A lot. Not only did she successfully incubate her eggs for over a month (usually about 33 days) during an incredibly cold and snowy early spring, she and her mate have managed to raise at least three youngsters to what I would judge is more than half-way to fledging.<\/p>\n

In addition, she’s a talented home decorator. Did you notice?<\/p>\n

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There’s a feather on the rock ‘wall’ behind her, just to the right of her head. And it’s positioned perfectly in the niche in the rock, as if it had been placed there deliberately and carefully.<\/p>\n

Who knows, maybe it was. With all of her other accomplishments, I wouldn’t be surprised.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

With a little home decorating thrown in for good measure. (4 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134789,"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":[6,334,405,391],"tags":[1549,547,740,1318,137,159,6867,228,4032,5641,311],"class_list":["post-134788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-great-horned-owls-owls","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-babies","tag-bubo-virginianus","tag-chicks","tag-clutch-size","tag-female","tag-great-horned-owl","tag-home-decorating","tag-nest","tag-owlets","tag-shutter-speed-for-flight-shots","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/great-horned-owl-0381-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-z40","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134788","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=134788"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134853,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134788\/revisions\/134853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}