{"id":16879,"date":"2013-07-13T04:00:46","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T10:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=16879"},"modified":"2013-07-12T18:20:49","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T00:20:49","slug":"some-hope-for-barn-owls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/13\/some-hope-for-barn-owls\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Hope For Barn Owls"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve reported previously on this blog that Barn Owl populations took a huge hit this past winter in northern Utah.\u00a0 It was dreadfully cold for much of the winter with lots of snow.\u00a0 Normally that’s not a\u00a0major problem for these owls but with deep snow on the ground we had a warm spell that melted the surface of the snow and immediately after that we had an\u00a0extended cold snap.\u00a0 Those conditions caused a hard crust of ice to form on the snow surface that lasted for weeks.<\/p>\n

Barn Owls normally plunge through snow to get at voles which are their primary prey but with the crust on the surface they couldn’t get at them and many of\u00a0the owls\u00a0starved to death.\u00a0 It was heartbreaking to see those owls looking ragged and literally shivering in the cold in a vain effort to keep warm without the food required to stoke their internal furnaces.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

But here are two hardy survivors!\u00a0 They hang out in a metal hay shed and I’ve known they were there but they’re nearly always almost completely hidden from view during daytime.\u00a0 But last week I found these two out in the relative open and couldn’t resist snapping off a few shots.<\/p>\n

Not a pretty setting and they’re partly obscured\u00a0but it takes more than rusty metal in front two beautiful Barn Owls to put this bird photographer off.<\/p>\n

The seeds of hope for next year…<\/p>\n

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

I’ve reported previously on this blog that Barn Owl populations took a huge hit this past winter in northern Utah. It was dreadfully cold for much of the winter with lots of snow. Normally that’s not a huge problem for these owls but with deep snow on the ground we had a warm spell that melted the surface of the snow and immediately after that we had an extended cold snap. Those conditions caused a hard crust of ice to form on the snow surface that lasted for weeks.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16880,"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":[344,334],"tags":[45,256,1556,309,311,316],"class_list":["post-16879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barn-owls","category-birds","tag-barn-owl","tag-prey","tag-starve","tag-tyto-alba","tag-utah-2","tag-voles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/barn-owl-1056-ron-dudley1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4of","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16879","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=16879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}