\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\nThis is an older shot (June, 2010) of a male Short-eared Owl carrying a vole in flight. It’s delivering breakfast to its mate and two chicks in the nest (if you look closely you can see the beady little black eyes of the rotund rodent). Many folks believe that any close shot of an owl in flight and\u00a0coming toward the viewer has likely been baited. Throw in prey and the chances of baiting are increased even more. But I can assure you that this owl was not baited. In fact, short of photographing birds at my backyard feeder for practice (which may or may not be considered baiting), I do not bait.\u00a0 Ever.<\/p>\n
In that context the piece of debris sticking out from the neck region of the vole has always bothered me because some\u00a0might see it as evidence of baiting – thinking it resembles a piece of snare string or wire used in capturing the vole and\/or holding it in place.\u00a0For that\u00a0reason I’ve never done much with this image.<\/p>\n
I’ve always assumed that the piece of debris was picked up and held in place\u00a0by the talons of the owl as it captured the\u00a0vole but yesterday\u00a0I took a closer look and I’ve changed my mind.<\/p>\n
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![\"short-eared](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/short-eared-owl-8090-big-crop-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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Meadow Voles eat vegetation, tubers and roots and to my eye this extreme crop of the same image reveals that the “debris” is actually in the mouth of the vole.\u00a0What we’re seeing is likely part of the last meal of the portly prey. I suspect\u00a0the rodent\u00a0was scooped up out of the grass by the owl while it was dining.<\/p>\n
And that makes me feel a little better about the image. It would have been easy to clone the debris out of the photo but that’s something I really don’t like to do and now I’m not even tempted.<\/p>\n
It’s funny what goes through my mind about some of my photos.\u00a0I knew the truth all along of course and looking back I now know that I should never have been concerned about the perception of baiting with this image.\u00a0Folks will think what they think.<\/p>\n
I was probably a little paranoid about it. Live and learn…<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Something about this image has always bothered me a little. But no longer…<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29626,"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":[6,334,1493,360,356],"tags":[35,42,146,256,279,315,2417],"class_list":["post-29624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-baiting","tag-flight","tag-prey","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-vole","tag-vole-diet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/short-eared-owl-8090-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7HO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29624","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=29624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"short-eared](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/short-eared-owl-8090-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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