{"id":167853,"date":"2025-04-16T06:10:54","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T12:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=167853"},"modified":"2025-04-16T06:33:49","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T12:33:49","slug":"backlit-short-eared-owl-on-the-hunt-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/16\/backlit-short-eared-owl-on-the-hunt-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Backlit Short-eared Owl On The Hunt, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prepare yourself for possible overkill.<\/p>\n

I’ve said before that I’m a fan of consecutive flight shots with no skips, especially when they involve takeoffs and\/or landings, because they tend to give the viewer a better sense of the dynamics, effort and coordination required for flight. But that can involve a lot of sometimes similar photos that may be too much of a good thing for some viewers.<\/p>\n

Well, it isn’t for me so that’s what we’re gonna get today. Another reason a series like that appeals to me is that many consecutive flight shots are hard to get, so we don’t see them very often.<\/p>\n

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In Part I<\/a><\/span><\/span> two days ago, I documented this Short-eared Owl abandoning one hunting perch, a metal fence post, and flying to a new one, this clump of bushes in Utah’s west desert ten days ago. This is the last photo I posted in Part I.<\/p>\n

The following twelve photos are consecutive shots in a burst without any skips. There are skips before and after photo #14 and before #15. Many of these shots mostly speak for themselves so it’s my intention to keep my narration to a minimum. We’ll see how that goes.<\/p>\n

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The presumed female owl spotted prey on the ground some distance in front of her, so she took off after it.<\/p>\n

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While I was processing the photos the strong backlight was a challenge for me to deal with in the entire series.<\/p>\n

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Immediately after takeoff she had to rise high enough to clear the tallest twig in front of her.<\/p>\n

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Twig cleared. Now she can power-stroke directly toward the prey, presumably a vole.<\/p>\n

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The only vertical composition in the series.<\/p>\n

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She’s on a mission. I like her intensity.<\/p>\n

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During the entire series she never took her eye off the vole.<\/p>\n

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More twigs to negotiate. Now her flight path could…<\/p>\n

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become slightly steeper.<\/p>\n

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This is the last completely clear shot I got of her before some of the out-of-focus vegetation we see at lower left began to block our view of her.<\/p>\n

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Here she’s so close to the ground there’s a very out-of-focus dark vertical plant stem in front of the end of her right wing. And the obstructions are about to get worse. Much worse.<\/p>\n

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Seven frames later she’s mostly disappeared in the vegetation. What we do see looks more like a ghostly apparition of her. I got multiple photos similar to this one. I was simply amazed that the Canon R5 could keep her mostly in focus through all of that vegetation.<\/p>\n

Eventually I couldn’t see her at all. I waited a while for her to take off again but when she didn’t, I put my lens down and began to move my pickup to a spot where I thought I might have a slightly better light angle on her if she did take off. With prey or not.<\/p>\n

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When I looked up again I spotted her in flight far away. I could tell from other photos that she didn’t have prey. After I took this shot, she flew even further away where I could see her cavorting in the air with another Short-eared Owl. Presumably they’re a mated pair.<\/p>\n

Babies later this spring, I hope.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Babies this spring I hope. (15 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167863,"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":[35,7790,7789,178,7788,311,533],"class_list":["post-167853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-canon-r5-focusing-ability","tag-ghostly-apparition","tag-hunting","tag-short-eared-owl-taking-off-and-in-flight","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-7925-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-HFj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167853","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=167853"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167896,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167853\/revisions\/167896"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}