{"id":2867,"date":"2011-10-02T15:49:23","date_gmt":"2011-10-02T21:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=2867"},"modified":"2011-10-03T19:20:57","modified_gmt":"2011-10-04T01:20:57","slug":"burrowing-owls-of-antelope-island-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/02\/burrowing-owls-of-antelope-island-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Burrowing Owls of Antelope Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0I simply adore watching and photographing Burrowing Owls.\u00a0 They show more personality and cute little quirks than any other avian species I’ve photographed – especially the juveniles.\u00a0 There are usually three problems with shooting these birds though – finding them in the first place, getting close enough to them for high quality photographs without disturbing their normal activities or making them nervous\u00a0and catching them out in the open or on an elevated perch so that the vegetation that usually surrounds their burrows doesn’t obscure the birds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two summers ago a family of these owls had their burrow right along the road on the Antelope Island causeway.\u00a0\u00a0 They were obviously very accepting of all the traffic so getting close without disturbing them was no problem –\u00a0I’d just pull up on the road edge close to their burrow and stay in my pickup to photograph them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I photographed them for almost two weeks and I’ve kept a ridiculous<\/em> number of those images- just can’t make myself delete many of them.\u00a0 The family consisted of both parents and four juveniles.\u00a0 I spent most of my time photographing the juvies – they’re just so vivacious,\u00a0spunky and full of life that they make wonderful subjects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The problem at this burrow site was two-fold – lots of obscuring vegetation and then when they did perch up higher it was usually on some unattractive pieces of broken concrete adjacent to the burrow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"burrowing-owl-9527\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/9, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Occasionally one of the juveniles would be perched on this rock when\u00a0we arrived early in the morning, which delighted me because of the more attractive perch and the clear shot of the bird.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u00a01\/800, f\/9, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

The poses these young birds strike are varied and appealing as they explore their developing capabilities and interact with their siblings.\u00a0 The adults are\u00a0less effusive.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"burrowing-owl-9624\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/640, f\/9, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>One thing they like to do is flex their talons.<\/p>\n

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\"burrowing-owl-6658\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/400, f\/10, ISO 400,\u00a0100-400 @ 400<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0One morning this young bird came so close to us that I had to switch lenses – to the 100-400 zoom.\u00a0 If I remember correctly it was curious about a grasshopper in the grasses but when he\/she caught it the bird didn’t seem very sure about just what to do with it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"burrowing-owl-9281\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/400, f\/11, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

When siblings would perch together the were a hoot (pun intended) to watch as they explored and groomed each other, practiced their parallaxing skills and just generally reacted to their environment.\u00a0\u00a0 They seemed to love watching me as much as I loved watching them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"burrowing-owl-8859\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/640, f\/10, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

I included this image to show you the difference between the juvenile on the left and one of the parent birds, in spite of the obscuring vegetation in the foreground.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\"burrowing-owl-9829\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/640, f\/9, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the juveniles at the end of a stretch.<\/p>\n

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\"burrowing-owl-0159\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/500, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Another version of a stretch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"burrowing-owl-2010\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/400, f\/9, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

A grooming posture, from behind.<\/p>\n

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\"burrowing-owl-2086\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/1500, f\/9, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

This one could hardly keep its eyes open.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\"burrowing-owl-2247\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/9, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0I liked this stretching pose because of the unusual wing position and the tail sticking out between the primaries and secondaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"burrowing-owl-2809\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0These last two images were taken near a different burrow, which was also near the road, so I used the same technique of shooting from my vehicle as described previously.\u00a0 I anticipated this take-off so changed settings to get more shutter speed.\u00a0 In my experience it’s not often they take off toward you.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"burrowing-owl-2455\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/250, f\/13, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

This is three of the juveniles at the second burrow.\u00a0 One morning I found all three of them perched up high on a sagebrush in beautiful, warm light with a great background.\u00a0 I changed my aperture to f\/13 to try to get enough depth of field to get all three birds sharp but didn’t quite succeed as the bird on the left was about a foot in front of the others so it is slightly soft.\u00a0 Yes, I was very disappointed…<\/p>\n

This year the owls at this burrow failed to raise a brood and sadly I think I may know why.\u00a0 One morning this spring after both adults had returned to the burrow I saw about a half-dozen people who had walked from the road right over to the burrow – almost standing on top of it.\u00a0 My suspicion is that these folks, and very possibly others like them, spooked one of the potential parents to the point that it simply left.\u00a0 The other adult stayed at the burrow all summer (and is still there) but I never saw\u00a0the other\u00a0adult again and there were no chicks this year.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I asked a state parks employee several years ago about some burrowing owls at a particular site that had disappeared,\u00a0he told me that those birds had abandoned the burrow because they had been “loved to death” by curious people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sadly, I’m afraid that’s exactly what happened in this case too.<\/p>\n

Ron\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0I simply adore watching and photographing Burrowing Owls.\u00a0 They show more personality and cute little quirks than any other avian species I’ve photographed – especially the juveniles.\u00a0 There are usually three problems with shooting these birds though – finding them in the first place, getting close enough to them for high quality photographs without disturbing their normal activities or making them nervous\u00a0and catching them out in the open or on an elevated perch so that the vegetation that usually surrounds their burrows doesn’t obscure the birds.\u00a0 Two summers ago a family of these owls had their burrow right along the road on the Antelope Island causeway.\u00a0\u00a0 They were obviously very accepting of all the traffic so getting close without disturbing them was no problem –\u00a0I’d just pull up on the road edge close to their burrow and stay in my pickup to photograph them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I photographed them for almost two weeks and I’ve kept a ridiculous number of those images- just can’t make myself delete many of them.\u00a0 The family consisted of both parents and four juveniles.\u00a0 I spent most of my time photographing the juvies – they’re just so vivacious,\u00a0spunky and full of life that they make wonderful subjects.\u00a0 The problem at this burrow site was two-fold – lots of obscuring vegetation and then when they did perch up higher it was usually on some unattractive pieces of broken concrete adjacent to the burrow.\u00a0   1\/1250, f\/9, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc Occasionally one of the juveniles would be perched on this rock when\u00a0we…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,4,334,365,9,395,15],"tags":[31,510,62,243,297],"class_list":["post-2867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-burrowing-owls","category-favorite-locations","category-miscellaneous","category-owls","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-athene-cunicularia","tag-burrowing-owl","tag-parallax","tag-stretch"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Kf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2867","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=2867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}