{"id":19174,"date":"2013-10-12T05:17:49","date_gmt":"2013-10-12T11:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=19174"},"modified":"2013-10-12T05:20:35","modified_gmt":"2013-10-12T11:20:35","slug":"barn-owl-hunting-in-a-heavy-snow-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/12\/barn-owl-hunting-in-a-heavy-snow-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"Barn Owl Hunting In A Heavy Snow Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

This first image is almost six years old but it\u00a0includes an owl and a storm that I’ll never forget.<\/p>\n

There was already snow on the ground that January morning and the ponds of Farmington Bay were frozen thick and solid.\u00a0 I’d been shooting for a couple of hours when I noticed a very dark and menacing storm coming in from the south and it was moving fast.\u00a0 When the storm hit, and it did with a vengeance, I was still at the far end of the refuge (the “4-way pond”, for those familiar with the area) and since\u00a0I was driving a small 2 wheel drive\u00a0car at the time\u00a0I decided I’d better get out of there while the getting was good.<\/p>\n

The storm was eerie.\u00a0 It was black as pitch to the south, relatively light to the north and I was right in the middle, at least for the first few minutes.\u00a0 When the snow began to fall it did so softly and thick (I expected wind but there wasn’t any).\u00a0 As I\u00a0drove north to exit the refuge I drove slowly, hoping against all odds that I’d find a cooperative bird in the snow before I got stuck and\/or didn’t have any light.\u00a0 As I type this I can hear my tires crunching in the snow.\u00a0 That was the only sound –\u00a0whenever I stopped it was deathly quiet from the muffling effect of the snow.<\/p>\n

And then the\u00a0Barn Owl came along at the first bridge…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/800, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I was lucky to even notice it because it came up at an oblique angle behind me as I was driving.\u00a0 It passed over the road behind me and then flew over the frozen\u00a0pond to my left.\u00a0 It ignored me, intent on its business – hunting for voles in an almost impossible situation with all that snow, simply intent on survival.<\/p>\n

The appeal of\u00a0a\u00a0photograph\u00a0can be very personal, depending on\u00a0tastes, subject preferences, past experiences\u00a0and a\u00a0host of other factors.\u00a0 This is another “butt shot” with no eye contact and you can barely\u00a0see the\u00a0owls head\u00a0but this is\u00a0one of those\u00a0images that I react to emotionally in ways I have difficulty explaining.\u00a0 It’s probably a combination of things – my love of birds, the memories of the storm and the quiet and the precarious nature of survival\u00a0in these conditions for a species that\u00a0means so much to me.\u00a0 Perhaps you had to be there…<\/p>\n

I was able to get 8 “keeper” images as the owl\u00a0crossed over the small frozen pond (I’ve posted a different one of them previously).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the last minute I decided to include one more Barn Owl image taken that morning (one I’ve posted before).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn-owl-5442\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This shot was taken 27 minutes before the previous one, as I headed to the 4-way for one last attempt at birds at the south end just before the storm hit.\u00a0 This owl had already hunkered down at the bottom of a deep ravine in what I believe was likely an attempt to find some protection before the\u00a0storm moved in.\u00a0\u00a0 As close as I was to this bird\u00a0it had no intention of leaving the relative\u00a0comfort of\u00a0its refuge.\u00a0 So\u00a0I drove off and let it be.<\/p>\n

Perhaps another example of a “wise\u00a0old owl”…<\/p>\n

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

This first image is almost six years old but it includes an owl and a storm that I’ll never forget.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19214,"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":[45,134,286,309],"class_list":["post-19174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barn-owls","category-birds","tag-barn-owl","tag-farmington-bay-wildlife-management-area","tag-snow","tag-tyto-alba"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/barn-owl-5530-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4Zg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19174","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=19174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}