{"id":39784,"date":"2016-05-26T04:48:06","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T10:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=39784"},"modified":"2016-05-26T04:48:06","modified_gmt":"2016-05-26T10:48:06","slug":"fledgling-short-eared-owl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/26\/fledgling-short-eared-owl\/","title":{"rendered":"Fledgling Short-eared Owl"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve never had such a good look at a fledgling Short-eared Owl as I did yesterday morning. At this stage they look quite different from the adults.<\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But first here’s a typical adult for comparison’s sake. I photographed this bird three days ago in the same area of northern Utah where I found the fledgling yesterday. In fact it’s possible that this bird\u00a0is one of the parents, though there are many Short-eared Owls in the vicinity.<\/p>\n

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

1\/4000, f\/5, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And this is the fledgling, photographed yesterday morning on a painted metal fencepost right next to the remote\u00a0road. Notice how dark the owlet is compared to an adult – particularly its facial disc.<\/p>\n

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

1\/3200, f\/5, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Typical of many owls at this stage the youngster had no fear of me or anything else including\u00a0the occasional vehicle\u00a0and a lady on a bicycle who rode between me and the owl at least a dozen times during the time I spent with the bird.\u00a0She was apparently getting her morning exercise – back and forth, back and forth, ad infinitum…<\/p>\n

Here the bird was\u00a0 parallaxing on the sound of my shutter, first in one\u00a0direction…<\/p>\n

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

1\/3200, f\/5, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

and then in the other.<\/p>\n

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

1\/4000, f\/5, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Though this owl didn’t give me many poses its face\u00a0was amazingly expressive – here it seems to be giving me an impertinent look<\/p>\n

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

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And in this image the bird looks vulnerable (which it is) and forlorn – all of which may be anthropomorphic on my part but I thought the apparent\u00a0expressions were endearing.<\/p>\n

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

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This\u00a0owl has left the nest and can fly (otherwise how did it get to the top of the post?)\u00a0and its hunting instincts were apparent. Several times it looked intently at the grasses near the road where it had apparently seen or heard voles or other potential prey.<\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

At one point it looked up into the sky and called out. I wondered if it had seen one of its parents in flight\u00a0(shooting from my pickup I couldn’t look in that direction). It’s possible that the parents may\u00a0still be\u00a0supplementing it with food so I soon left the area with the owl still perched on the post. When I returned approximately an hour later it was gone.<\/p>\n

Short-eared Owls are abundant in northern Utah this spring and I’m delighted about that because they’ve been few and far between in recent years.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: I never disturbed this vulnerable young bird. I stayed in my pickup and photographed it from the opposite side of the road. I paid very close attention to its behavior and it never showed any sign of nervousness with my presence. One big noisy truck came roaring by at about 50 mph and\u00a0within about 10′ of the owl and it didn’t even flinch, though it did watch the truck as it passed. For their own safety I actually wish these young birds were a little more skittish…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve never had such a good look at a fledgling Short-eared Owl as I did yesterday morning. At this stage they look quite different from the adults.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39786,"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":[334,356],"tags":[35,689,145,2371,279,311],"class_list":["post-39784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-box-elder-county","tag-fledgling","tag-parallaxing","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/short-eared-owl-0924-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-alG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39784","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=39784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}