{"id":33948,"date":"2015-09-07T05:37:54","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T11:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=33948"},"modified":"2015-09-07T05:37:54","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T11:37:54","slug":"an-unforgettable-short-eared-owl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/07\/an-unforgettable-short-eared-owl\/","title":{"rendered":"An Unforgettable Short-eared Owl"},"content":{"rendered":"

This individual Short-eared Owl has had a significant effect on the focus of my life as a bird photographer and nature lover.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"short-eared1\/1250, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I encountered her on a foggy morning almost exactly 5 years ago at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. She was right next to the\u00a0road and because of the fog we didn’t even see her until we were quite close. Surprised that she hadn’t flown off I stopped my pickup and photographed her for about 14 minutes as the fog slowly cleared out. She paid very little attention to my pickup and spent much of her time scanning the grasses below her for prey, as she’s doing here. Even though it was beginning to clear out the effects of the fog are still visible in this image.<\/p>\n

This bird literally enchanted me. This was one of my first trips to the Centennial Valley and the first time I’d ever been this close to the species for any amount of time. Watching such a beautiful creature as she went about her business and accepted my presence as she did so was fulfilling to the point that I can’t even describe it. This bird is a significant part of the reason that in the ensuing\u00a0five years I’ve invested so much time, effort and even financial resources into camping\u00a0trips to the Centennial Valley. I’ve photographed quite a few\u00a0Short-eared Owls in the valley since then but this\u00a0particular owl was the one that kept lingering in my mind and bringing me back.<\/p>\n

Which leads me to… yup, you may have guessed it. Later today we head for the valley once again on a camping\/photo trip. The weather looks good, fires and smoke have diminished and by tonight most of the holiday crowds should be back home preparing for their work\/school week.<\/p>\n

How could I resist?<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: Regular readers know the drill: I’ll attempt to publish daily posts (and reply to at least some comments) from the road but due to extremely limited access to reliable internet that’s always a hit or miss proposition. Thanks for your patience if it becomes problematic.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This individual Short-eared Owl has had a significant effect on the focus of my life as a bird photographer and nature lover.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33949,"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":[334,1493,360,356],"tags":[35,555,137,148,220,263,279],"class_list":["post-33948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-centennial-valley","tag-female","tag-fog","tag-montana-2","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-short-eared-owl"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/short-eared-owl-5524-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8Py","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33948","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=33948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}