{"id":167804,"date":"2025-04-14T05:11:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T11:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=167804"},"modified":"2025-04-14T05:35:43","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T11:35:43","slug":"backlit-short-eared-owl-perched-taking-off-and-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/14\/backlit-short-eared-owl-perched-taking-off-and-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Backlit Short-eared Owl Perched, Taking Off And In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

An owl, any owl, in marginal light is better than no owl at all.<\/p>\n

Eight days ago I saw three and possibly four different Short-eared Owls in Utah’s west desert. Based on behavior, I’m confident that at least two of them were a mated pair. All of them were on the ‘wrong’ side of the road so they were backlit or strongly sidelit.<\/p>\n

I took photos anyway. After not seeing Shorties for so long, how could I not?<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I believe this owl is a female but I can’t be sure. She was mostly backlit as she hunted from the metal fence post. After a while she decided to…<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

fly to a different hunting perch where her luck might improve and I managed to capture her at takeoff and…<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

in flight. In this challenging light this might be my favorite photo of the series.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I got one more photo of her in flight before my camera focus either locked on to the fence and vegetation directly below her (out of frame at bottom) or I partially or completely lost her in the frame. Or both.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

14 shots in the burst later I managed to get her in frame and in focus again for a single photo while she was still in flight.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This was her new hunting perch (I had to back my pickup up quite a distance to get this shot). At least it’s a natural perch but the light angle didn’t improve. At this point, she wasn’t done and neither was I.<\/p>\n

To be continued. This procrastinator needs to go finish his taxes.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

An owl, any owl, in marginal light is better than no owl at all. (6 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167812,"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":[334,356],"tags":[35,146,279,851,311,533],"class_list":["post-167804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-flight","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-taking-off","tag-utah-2","tag-west-desert"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/short-eared-owl-7874b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-HEw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167804","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=167804"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167848,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167804\/revisions\/167848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}