{"id":19646,"date":"2013-10-31T05:53:38","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T11:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=19646"},"modified":"2013-10-31T05:53:38","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T11:53:38","slug":"a-spooky-great-horned-owl-for-halloween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/31\/a-spooky-great-horned-owl-for-halloween\/","title":{"rendered":"A Spooky Great Horned Owl For Halloween"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This year I decided to make an attempt at getting into the Halloween spirit with this Great Horned Owl image.\u00a0 I think this birds &#8220;blown&#8221; eye contributes to the effect.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/great-horned-owl-6332-ron-dudley.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"19647\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/31\/a-spooky-great-horned-owl-for-halloween\/great-horned-owl-6332-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/great-horned-owl-6332-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"900,720\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;7.1&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;RON DUDLEY&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;Canon EOS 7D&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1277282501&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;700&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;400&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.0025&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"great horned owl 6332 ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/great-horned-owl-6332-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-19647\" alt=\"great horned owl 6332 ron dudley\" src=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/great-horned-owl-6332-ron-dudley.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"720\" srcset=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/great-horned-owl-6332-ron-dudley.jpg 900w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/great-horned-owl-6332-ron-dudley-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/great-horned-owl-6332-ron-dudley-150x120.jpg 150w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/great-horned-owl-6332-ron-dudley-400x320.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>1\/400, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This adult was actually preening but I thought the combination of the somewhat unusual pose with the\u00a0open beak and red tongue was appropriate for Halloween.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">And then there&#8217;s that &#8220;blown&#8221; eye (notice that the pupil is not round).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In my experience the incidence of blown eyes (atypical shape\/appearance of the\u00a0pupil relative to the rest of the visible eye) is unusually high in owls, though I have seen it in one <a href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/27\/a-guide-to-aging-bald-eagles\/\" target=\"_blank\">adult Bald Eagle (scroll down to the 12th photo).\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>I speculate that the following factors may contribute to the seemingly high incidence of this condition in owls:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">most blown eyes are caused by injury (I assume)\u00a0during aggressive encounters with prey or other animals.\u00a0 GHO&#8217;s in particular are known for their aggressiveness<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">owls have unusually large eyes which might make them\u00a0more vulnerable to injury<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">owls tend to hunt in low light which\u00a0may make injury more likely<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">owls tend to have brightly colored corneas\u00a0and their\u00a0eyes are large and conspicuous\u00a0so the shape of their pupil is easier to see than it would be in birds with smaller,\u00a0dark eyes<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Some\u00a0of this is speculation on my part.\u00a0 Others may have more informed explanations for this condition in owls and other birds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Happy Halloween!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This year I decided to make an attempt at getting into the Halloween spirit with this Great Horned Owl image.  I think this birds &#8220;blown&#8221; eye contributes to the effect.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/31\/a-spooky-great-horned-owl-for-halloween\/\"><span>Continue reading<\/span><i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19647,"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":[334,361,405,1493],"tags":[399,547,1716,159,1717,1219,1718],"class_list":["post-19646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-family-farm-in-northwest-montana","category-great-horned-owls-owls","category-montana-favorite-locations","tag-blown-eye","tag-bubo-virginianus","tag-eye-injury","tag-great-horned-owl","tag-halloween","tag-pupil","tag-spooky-owl"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/great-horned-owl-6332-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-56S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19646","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=19646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}