{"id":14537,"date":"2013-04-21T02:30:41","date_gmt":"2013-04-21T08:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=14537"},"modified":"2013-04-21T12:43:40","modified_gmt":"2013-04-21T18:43:40","slug":"burrowing-owl-youngsters-hams-of-the-bird-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/21\/burrowing-owl-youngsters-hams-of-the-bird-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Burrowing Owl Youngsters – Hams Of The Bird World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prepare to lose your heart if you ever have the opportunity to photograph or watch\u00a0juvenile Burrowing Owls up close.\u00a0 They’re full of spontaneous antics and personality and they’re cute as a button.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0photographed these\u00a0siblings several years ago along the causeway to Antelope Island.\u00a0 The burrow was right next to the road\u00a0and they were\u00a0very\u00a0acclimated to vehicles.\u00a0 As per usual,\u00a0I was shooting from my pickup and all I had to do was stop on the shoulder of the road and photograph from there from inside my vehicle.\u00a0 In most situations I wouldn’t attempt to get this close for fear of disturbing the birds.<\/p>\n

I’ve posted several images similar to these in the past (and there’s one\u00a0on the rotating\u00a0banner at\u00a0the top of my blog)\u00a0but these actual\u00a0shots are new to my blog and I thought some of you might like to see a whole series of the same birds taken on the\u00a0same morning to provide a better feeling\u00a0for the personalities of these little characters.<\/p>\n

The light was harsh, the birds were sidelit, there was obscuring vegetation and the perch was ugly concrete (which is why I chose to leave my teleconverter on and go for intimate portraits) but the birds were simply wonderful.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/400, f\/11, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I believe there were five juveniles in the burrow and I photographed them for\u00a0many days\u00a0though all these shots were taken on the same morning.\u00a0 Two of the juvies liked to perch on a piece of concrete that was very close to my\u00a0 truck and when they did they would often study me intently.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/800, f\/9, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A few minutes later they had changed position on the perch and one youngster tilted its head as it checked me out.\u00a0 There’s been some discussion in a previous post<\/strong><\/a> about whether or not this is parallaxing behavior (visual) or auditory.\u00a0 Whatever its purpose\u00a0I sure find the pose to be appealing…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/800, f\/9, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0though the other youngster appears to be\u00a0bored by it all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/640, f\/9, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0And, as in humans, yawning seems to be contagious.\u00a0 These young owls are champion yawners.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/640, f\/9, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Then one bird leaned over and nibbled on the cheek of its brother or sister.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/500, f\/9, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0At one point the owl on the left was so intensely curious about me that it leaned over (apparently to get its head as close to me as possible) and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/500, f\/9, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

did that head rotation thing again, this time so far that its eyes were even turned past vertical.<\/p>\n

There are times when I’m photographing young Burrowing Owls that I become so\u00a0enamored by their adorable behaviors that I almost forget to push the shutter.\u00a0 Occasionally I’ve even put the camera down and just watched them.\u00a0 They are truly a joy.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Prepare to lose your heart if you ever have the opportunity to photograph or watch juvenile Burrowing Owls up close. They’re full of spontaneous antics and personality and they’re cute as a button. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[334,365],"tags":[31,510,62,539,190,243,1396,330],"class_list":["post-14537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-burrowing-owls","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-athene-cunicularia","tag-burrowing-owl","tag-causeway","tag-juvenile","tag-parallax","tag-siblings","tag-yawn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3Mt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14537","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=14537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}