{"id":39817,"date":"2016-05-28T06:29:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-28T12:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=39817"},"modified":"2016-05-28T06:29:00","modified_gmt":"2016-05-28T12:29:00","slug":"burrowing-owl-takeoff-and-my-first-fledglings-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/28\/burrowing-owl-takeoff-and-my-first-fledglings-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Burrowing Owl Takeoff (and my first fledglings of the year)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been watching for Burrowing Owl\u00a0fledglings in northern Utah\u00a0for a couple of weeks with no luck until yesterday morning. Don’t expect high quality photos of them (they were too far away and mostly hidden in vegetation) but I was able to document their emergence from a burrow and that alone was an exciting event for me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

I watched as an adult owl carried a vole to the burrow so I stopped my pickup and scoped it with my lens. Sure enough, for the first time this year I was able to see very young Burrowing Owls. Two of them are clearly visible (though out of focus)\u00a0here as one of the adults flies off.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

Here’s two more of them – one in plain view and the other difficult to see.<\/p>\n

I’ve looked forward with anticipation to the emergence\u00a0of young Burrowing Owls\u00a0because they’re so darned much fun to watch and photograph. They’re loaded to the gills with personality and I can hardly wait to experience their antics once again.<\/p>\n

Though I was excited to see these young owls yesterday\u00a0I had significantly\u00a0more luck getting quality images of the adults.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Early in the morning I found this one perched on a leaning\u00a0corner fence post near the road. In my mind I called this bird “Bloody Bill” for obvious reasons. Apparently this adult owl had recent success in hunting voles for its chicks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

When it eventually took off it did so at an angle that gave me a good profile view of the dynamics of takeoff. In the relatively soft early morning light I had just about the right combination of camera settings (shutter speed, aperture and ISO) to capture the action as best I could. I was happy to not screw up an opportunity like this one.<\/p>\n

All in all it was a great morning – good light, good birds, good company and my first Burrowing Owl chicks of the year. And in a surprise and pleasant conclusion to the morning we had lunch with friends\u00a0Neil Rossmiller and his wife Connie on our way out of the area.<\/p>\n

I wish every day in the field was\u00a0as successful and enjoyable.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

I’ve been watching for Burrowing Owl chicks in northern Utah for a couple of weeks with no luck until yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39818,"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],"tags":[510,689,62,740,2975,757,2738,311],"class_list":["post-39817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-burrowing-owls","tag-athene-cunicularia","tag-box-elder-county","tag-burrowing-owl","tag-chicks","tag-fledglings","tag-juveniles","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/burrowing-owl-4319-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-amd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39817","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=39817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}