{"id":37310,"date":"2016-03-07T06:06:15","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T13:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=37310"},"modified":"2016-03-07T06:06:15","modified_gmt":"2016-03-07T13:06:15","slug":"male-short-eared-owls-fighting-for-mates-and-breeding-territory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/07\/male-short-eared-owls-fighting-for-mates-and-breeding-territory\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Short-eared Owls Fighting For Mates And Breeding Territory"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve now been blogging for 5 1\/2 years and in the beginning I had no audience to speak of so many current readers have never seen some of my very early posts. I believe\u00a0a few of those posts\u00a0deserve another look so occasionally I rework one of them (usually reprocessing the images and rewriting some or all of the text)\u00a0and post the images again. This post is one of those – a blast from the distant\u00a0past.<\/p>\n

In June of 2011 I photographed male Short-eared Owls fighting over disputed nesting territory in Montana’s Centennial Valley. When I arrived in\u00a0the valley I expected them to be already nesting but because of a very cold spring nesting hadn’t even begun.\u00a0Instead they were competing for territory and mates. On one morning I was incredibly lucky to find two males trying to impress a female with their aerial prowess and fighting skills.\u00a0They were so engrossed in their activities that they\u00a0ignored me completely.<\/p>\n

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Often one male was on the ground as another male came in to attack so at the last second\u00a0the grounded male would jump up to defend itself.<\/p>\n

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In order to get their talons into an effective defensive position for an attack from above they had to assume some interesting body positions. Here the aggressor has already passed by.<\/p>\n

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This male sees its tormentor approaching but it’s coming in low…<\/p>\n

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so this time it stayed on the ground and its attacker passed just overhead.<\/p>\n

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In another attack the owl on the ground…<\/p>\n

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rose up to meet its challenger but apparently sensed that no contact would be made…<\/p>\n

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so it dropped back to the ground as the incoming bird flared up and away.<\/p>\n

As was often the case the birds didn\u2019t make actual contact. In researching this behavior I\u2019ve learned that they will sometimes lock talons and fall to the ground before releasing. I suspect that as they rush toward each other they look for a weakness in defense \u2013 if they spot one in the other birds defensive posture they would likely make\u00a0physical contact.<\/p>\n

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Most of the time both birds stayed\u00a0near the ground but occasionally one of the owls would fly several hundred feet up and circle over the other male (and the female, who was on the ground watching the entire process) and then begin a wing-clapping display that is part of an acrobatic aerial display called \u201csky dancing\u201d. In this behavior the owl shows exaggerated wing beats and claps\u00a0its wing tips together\u00a0which makes a sound that resembles a person slapping their thigh with an open hand at a fast speed. I could hear the sound very clearly even with the bird flying so high.<\/p>\n

One of the males\u00a0had been\u00a0performing this clapping display which apparently didn\u2019t sit well with the male on the ground so it took off and rose to challenge the show-off bird.<\/p>\n

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Approaching the other male who is much\u00a0higher up\u2026<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/em>Almost there.<\/p>\n

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This time I thought the aggressor might actually make physical contact since the other bird doesn\u2019t seem to be in a very effective defensive posture<\/p>\n

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But he didn\u2019t. The aggressor, on the left, seems to have deliberately aimed behind the other owl and I don\u2019t believe they made actual contact.<\/p>\n

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But most\u00a0of the time the aggression played out very close to the ground. Often both birds would be on the ground several hundred yards apart but watching each other intently when one would take off and rush the other.\u00a0Typically the owl on the ground would\u00a0until the last second to pop up and present its talons defensively.<\/p>\n

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But\u00a0again, no apparent contact.<\/p>\n

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The action was so fast and furious at the point of potential contact that I usually didn’t even know what I’d captured until I got back to my campsite and reviewed my images. This\u00a0shot makes me grin widely every time I see it.<\/p>\n

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I thought this photo would help the viewer put the combat grounds and some of the behavior in perspective.\u00a0Here you can see both males eyeing each other from afar and watching for an impending attack (the\u00a0distant\u00a0owl is small and\u00a0near the right edge of the frame).<\/p>\n

Believe me, getting an owl in focus in flight while it\u2019s carrying a vole is much<\/em> easier than when they\u2019re fighting. Short-ears usually have moth-like buoyant flight with slow deliberate wing beats that make them relatively easy to\u00a0follow with a long lens. That\u2019s definitely not the case when they get close to each other in a skirmish.\u00a0Their defensive and offensive\u00a0maneuvers then are erratic, unpredictable, lightning quick and hellishly difficult to\u00a0track.\u00a0 I got very few technically strong images of the behavior\u00a0and\u00a0I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve noticed that\u00a0some of the owls in these photos are less than tack-sharp and the changing lighting conditions combined with the bright white ventral surfaces of the males made for some blown whites. Even so, I\u2019m still delighted to have been able to get the images I did\u00a0and to see the behaviors.<\/p>\n

For me, this was a morning to remember.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: I apologize for not including my camera techs. I intended to but last-minute computer glitches (two of them, unrelated) didn’t allow the necessary time.<\/em><\/p>\n

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On one morning I was incredibly lucky to find two males trying to impress a female with their aerial prowess and fighting skills.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37322,"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":[334,394,1493,360,356],"tags":[35,555,140,504,2873,263,279,417],"class_list":["post-37310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-centennial-valley","tag-fighting","tag-inciting-females","tag-males","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-sky-dancing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/short-eared-owl-7711-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9HM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37310","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=37310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}