{"id":30763,"date":"2015-04-15T05:25:28","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T11:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=30763"},"modified":"2015-04-15T05:37:37","modified_gmt":"2015-04-15T11:37:37","slug":"male-short-eared-owl-a-creature-of-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/15\/male-short-eared-owl-a-creature-of-habit\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Short-eared Owl &#8211; A Creature Of Habit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This male Short-eared Owl was as set in his ways as I am and that&#8217;s saying something. In June of 2010 I photographed him for most of a week as he delivered voles to his family in a nest at the base of a sagebrush in Montana&#8217;s Centennial Valley. He had a routine worked out that he stuck to come hell or high water &#8211; a bird after my own heart.<\/p>\n<p>I knew the approximate boundaries of his hunting territory because I watched him defend it many times against other owls (the following summer I <a href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/17\/agonistic-fighting-behavior-in-male-short-eared-owls\/\" target=\"_blank\">documented<\/a> some fighting male\u00a0owls in precisely the same area &#8211; in fact one of them\u00a0may have been this same bird).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"30764\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/15\/male-short-eared-owl-a-creature-of-habit\/short-eared-owl-7628-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/short-eared-owl-7628-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"900,643\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;6.3&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;1277464555&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;700&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;640&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.0004&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"short-eared owl 7628 ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/short-eared-owl-7628-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-30764\" src=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/short-eared-owl-7628-ron-dudley.jpg\" alt=\"short-eared owl 7628 ron dudley\" width=\"900\" height=\"643\" srcset=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/short-eared-owl-7628-ron-dudley.jpg 900w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/short-eared-owl-7628-ron-dudley-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/short-eared-owl-7628-ron-dudley-150x107.jpg 150w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/short-eared-owl-7628-ron-dudley-400x286.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><em><strong>1\/2500\/ f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>This\u00a0was his routine which he repeated time and time again all week:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>he would fly off to hunt voles. He was a great hunter and I could see him diving to the ground after them from far away<\/li>\n<li>when he captured one he would always carry it in his talons and land with it on this ugly metal post perhaps 100&#8242; from the nest<\/li>\n<li>while perched on the pole he would transfer the vole to his beak<\/li>\n<li>then he would fly off to the nest and deliver the vole to his mate and two chicks, as he&#8217;s doing in this photo<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That routine almost never varied. I watched him deliver dozens of voles to the nest and only rarely did he fail to land on the pole first\u00a0(a couple of times he landed on sagebrush\u00a0first instead of\u00a0the pole)\u00a0or make the food transfer from talons to beak\u00a0while perched there.<\/p>\n<p>I have a theory as to why he transferred the meal to his beak before delivering it to the nest. His mate was extremely aggressive toward him when he got close to the nest with food so he would approach the nest on the ground with the vole in his beak, drop it in front of her and then quickly get the hell out of Dodge as she rushed him for the food. If the vole had been in his talons he&#8217;d have had a difficult time releasing it in a timely and safe manner before he beat his retreat. He was obviously afraid of her in those situations and I marveled at his paternal instinct that compelled him to feed his family despite the apparent danger (females are 20% larger than males).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve posted other images of this male in the past but this one is new to my blog. Long-time readers may recall that early in my blogging career I despised any sign of the &#8220;hand of man&#8221; in my images and this metal post certainly fits that description so I always skipped over this image. But over the years, largely due to the influence of some of my readers, I&#8217;ve become more tolerant of some unnatural elements in my\u00a0photos. And last night\u00a0while I was reviewing some older images (after an incredible storm that blew through the valley, caused lots of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sltrib.com\/news\/2398392-155\/windstorm-causes-mayhem-on-utah-roads\" target=\"_blank\">damage<\/a>\u00a0and knocked out my power\u00a0thus\u00a0putting me behind the 8-ball for this post) I encountered this shot and the memories came flooding back.<\/p>\n<p>My experience with this owl family was one of the highlights of my bird photography career so I decided to go with this image for today&#8217;s post. I hope you enjoy it.<\/p>\n<p>Ron<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This male Short-eared Owl was as set in his ways as I am and that&#8217;s saying something.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/15\/male-short-eared-owl-a-creature-of-habit\/\"><span>Continue reading<\/span><i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30764,"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":[334,394,1493,391,360,356],"tags":[35,555,146,1484,211,228,256,263,279,315],"class_list":["post-30763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-centennial-valley","tag-flight","tag-hand-of-man","tag-male","tag-nest","tag-prey","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/short-eared-owl-7628-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-80b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30763","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=30763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}