{"id":32250,"date":"2015-06-24T04:38:35","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T10:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=32250"},"modified":"2015-06-24T04:38:35","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T10:38:35","slug":"juvenile-burrowing-owl-walking-the-high-wire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/24\/juvenile-burrowing-owl-walking-the-high-wire\/","title":{"rendered":"Juvenile Burrowing Owl Walking The High-wire"},"content":{"rendered":"

This gutsy little juvenile Burrowing Owl pulled off at least one maneuver that might make the Flying Wallendas jealous.<\/p>\n

For the sake of convenience I’m going to refer to this owl as a male even though I have no idea what sex it is.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was one of at least six juveniles I photographed at a burrow\u00a0in Box Elder County two days ago.\u00a0 Most often the owls would perch on the\u00a0very old\u00a0fence posts\u00a0with rusty barbed wire stretched between them but a couple of the juveniles liked to push their luck by landing on the bare\u00a0wire which didn’t give them a stable perch in the breeze that was occasionally fairly stiff. When\u00a0this bird first landed it seemed stable enough but then it made the mistake of trying to turn on the perch and when it did it\u00a0struggled to maintain its balance.<\/p>\n

Let me set the stage for what happened next. Several feet to the right there’s a large old wooden post\u00a0with lots of\u00a0barbed wire wrapped around it. At one place in front (relative to the bird)\u00a0of the post two wires cross in a way that would provide a much more stable perch for the owl. Almost certainly this little guy had perched there before and was well aware that if he reached the crossed wires he’d have a stable platform. So he decided to make his way in that direction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

And he chose to attempt to walk the wire rather than fly, at least at first. He began to\u00a0carefully place one foot in front of the other but balance was still an issue so he used his wings as an aid.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

His concentration on the wire was intense and I’m pretty sure he was also trying to avoid the sharp barbs so once…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

he\u00a0performed a little Wallenda-like hop on the wire…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

but landed on one of the barbs. The barb element sticking up went between his toes but he had to grasp the wire tightly and I believe he may have felt the pain underneath from the bottom element of the barb.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

He lifted his foot and decided there must be a better way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

He\u00a0apparently remembered that he was a bird and birds can fly so he lifted off briefly…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

and flew the last couple of feet to the crossed wires that would provide a more stable perch (naturally I caught him with his eyes closed as he landed…)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

He began to hook his toes over both wires where they crossed…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

and then settled in on his more comfortable perch for a few minutes before taking off on yet another practice flight.<\/p>\n

All of this occurred within a span of just a few seconds and really gave my camera a workout. I took 55 shots of the bird as it struggled on the wire and then hopped and flew toward the post and I was happy that most of them were sharp. Though this is a behavioral series I like a few of these images well enough (the second one especially)\u00a0that they could serve as stand-alones.<\/p>\n

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

This gutsy little juvenile Burrowing Owl pulled off at least one maneuver that might make the Flying Wallendas jealous.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32252,"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":[334,365,395],"tags":[510,603,689,62,2541,190,311],"class_list":["post-32250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-burrowing-owls","category-miscellaneous","tag-athene-cunicularia","tag-barbed-wire","tag-box-elder-county","tag-burrowing-owl","tag-flying-wallendas","tag-juvenile","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/burrowing-owl-3006-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8oa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32250","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=32250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}