{"id":30244,"date":"2015-03-23T06:29:22","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T12:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=30244"},"modified":"2015-03-23T08:36:39","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T14:36:39","slug":"the-most-popular-burrowing-owl-on-antelope-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/23\/the-most-popular-burrowing-owl-on-antelope-island\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Popular Burrowing Owl On Antelope Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whenever Burrowing Owls take up residence in a burrow close to the road on the island they quickly become “discovered” and vulnerable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4x, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The burrow of this owl and its apparent mate (who seems to be the most shy of the two birds) is quite close to the main road that loops around the north end of the island so it’s fairly unusual not to find at least one vehicle parked along the shoulder with a big (or small) lens pointed in the direction of the burrow. Most folks seem respectful of the birds and don’t get out of their vehicles or approach the burrow and as long as that continues these owls may become acclimated to traffic and parked vehicles\u00a0and have a successful nesting season. But just one stupid act\u00a0may cause them to abandon the burrow.\u00a0A few days ago\u00a0as I crested a small hill I saw a man walking back toward his red pickup from the\u00a0direction of the burrow. I don’t know how close he actually got to it but I have my suspicions and they make me shudder. A couple of days later I was delighted to see that the birds were still there.<\/p>\n

On one early summer morning several years ago I saw a group of 4-5 people trample right over the top of an active burrow as they investigated it.\u00a0There was a mated pair of owls in residence but that burrow was soon abandoned.<\/p>\n

Here’s a link to another particularly egregious example of unethical and disrespectful human behavior toward Burrowing Owls<\/a> that I’ve documented.<\/p>\n

There’s another active burrow on the island next to a\u00a0dirt\u00a0track “road” that may be even more vulnerable than this one because the location is more remote so\u00a0thoughtless and\/or deliberately\u00a0unethical\u00a0acts by humans are less likely to be observed by others.\u00a0I was happy to see that during the recent “Buffalo Run” (a series of races on the island that draws\u00a0large crowds and gobs of traffic) park personnel closed off this road in an apparent effort to protect\u00a0the burrow.<\/p>\n

Personally I seldom photograph at this burrow (the one in the photo).\u00a0The light angle is less than ideal (the burrow is south of the road) and the\u00a0owls still seem nervous so I figure they don’t need any more pressure than they already have.\u00a0But\u00a0if they eventually calm down a little (a good sign of that will be finding them perched high on nearby sagebrush or old sunflower stems\u00a0while vehicles are nearby) I probably won’t be able to resist them.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note to photographers: The reason for my high shutter speed and ISO is that I was set up for this bird to take off. Burrowing Owls are incredibly fast and I wanted sharp shots if that should happen. I was also testing the high ISO capabilities of the Canon 7D Mark II.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Whenever Burrowing Owls take up residence in a burrow close to the road on the island they quickly become “discovered” and vulnerable.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30245,"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":[3,334,365,16,391],"tags":[31,510,2448,62,2348,187,311],"class_list":["post-30244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-burrowing-owls","category-photography-ethics","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-athene-cunicularia","tag-bird-photography-ethics","tag-burrowing-owl","tag-canon-7d-mark-ii","tag-iso","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/burrowing-owl-9171-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7RO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30244","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=30244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}