{"id":32989,"date":"2015-07-30T07:03:26","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T13:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=32989"},"modified":"2015-07-30T07:57:19","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T13:57:19","slug":"this-short-eared-owl-very-nearly-flew-in-my-pickup-window-yesterday-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/30\/this-short-eared-owl-very-nearly-flew-in-my-pickup-window-yesterday-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"This Short-eared Owl Very Nearly Flew In My Pickup Window Yesterday Morning"},"content":{"rendered":"

A visit to Box Elder County yesterday morning resulted in a very close encounter with a male (I believe)\u00a0Short-eared Owl in flight.<\/p>\n

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\"short-eared<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

I\u00a0found him hunting from a fence line in a wet agricultural area. When he perched on this old fence post he was side-lit but still stately and very handsome.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"short-eared<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

Then he turned on his perch, looked\u00a0directly at me and launched…<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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\"short-eared<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

in my direction. And he stayed the course.\u00a0Viewers can judge how directly he came at me by noticing how the former post perch stays right behind the bird in all but the last of the following images.<\/p>\n

There are flaws in some of these images. I clipped some wings, the light angle was less than perfect and some shots are sharper than others but collectively they do give the viewer a sense for what I experienced with this audacious owl.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"short-eared<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

I expected the owl to veer off very soon after takeoff but it didn’t. It just kept coming…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\"short-eared<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

and coming.<\/p>\n

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\"short-eared<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

What I was seeing through my viewfinder was really quite intense. I think I know how a vole feels when one of these birds is coming in after it.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"short-eared<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

I clipped wings on many shots and chose to crop some of them like this.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"short-eared<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

In many (perhaps most)\u00a0images we see of owls coming directly at the photographer the bird has been baited with live mice but I want to make it perfectly clear that this bird was not baited or manipulated in any way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\"short-eared<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

Even at this point we still see the post directly behind the owl. I was definitely\u00a0in this birds crosshairs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"short-eared<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

Soon I wasn’t getting much more in the frame than the body of the bird and the base of its wings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"short-eared<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

This final image isn’t as sharp as the others but I wanted to include it because it’s full frame (uncropped) so it gives the viewer a sense for how close I was when it was taken. I lost focus after this image but after that the owl came in even closer. I estimate it was\u00a0less than\u00a010 feet from my window when it finally veered off and I watched it with my naked eye as it did so. As one might expect from an owl I didn’t hear the slightest sound as the bird flew by my open window in an impressive display of natural stealth “technology”.<\/p>\n

I was able to get 29 shots of this owl in flight as it came at me. The fourth and last images in this post are full frame.<\/p>\n

This was an experience I won’t soon forget. I’ve photographed many\u00a0Short-eared Owls over the years but I’ve never had one come in anywhere near this close. It makes me wonder if the bird had spotted its own reflection in my lens and came in to investigate.<\/p>\n

Or maybe I look\u00a0more like a juicy giant vole than I think I do…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – Sorry for the late post but I had some “technical difficulties” this morning.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A visit to Box Elder County yesterday morning resulted in a very close encounter with a female Short-eared Owl in flight.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32994,"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":[334,16,356],"tags":[35,42,689,146,178,279,2600,311],"class_list":["post-32989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-photography-ethics","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-baiting","tag-box-elder-county","tag-flight","tag-hunting","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-stealth-technology","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/short-eared-owl-0498-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8A5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32989","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=32989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}