{"id":39858,"date":"2016-05-30T04:40:15","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T10:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=39858"},"modified":"2016-05-30T04:40:15","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T10:40:15","slug":"short-eared-owl-fledglings-galore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/30\/short-eared-owl-fledglings-galore\/","title":{"rendered":"Short-eared Owl Fledglings Galore!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve said before that this has been a banner year for breeding\u00a0Short-eared Owls in northern Utah. Here’s more proof.<\/p>\n

Following are some of the fledgling Short-eared Owls I photographed last week. These owls range in age, flight skills and approachability but all of them are fledglings that have recently left the nest. Each was photographed last week near a road\u00a0from my pickup in northern Utah.<\/p>\n

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Some of the young birds I found were out in the open and conspicuously perched while others were…<\/p>\n

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about as buried in vegetation as they could get.<\/p>\n

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One morning I stumbled upon at least ten young owls dispersed over a sagebrush-covered hillside\u00a0next to\u00a0the road. This image and the following two show some of those birds.<\/p>\n

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With so many fledglings in the same small area they must have been from multiple nests.<\/p>\n

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This one was fully capable of flight, though many (perhaps all)\u00a0of the others were too.<\/p>\n

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This young owl was right on the edge of the road I was driving. The day before I found a road-killed adult Short-eared Owl in this same area so it made me apprehensive for the safety of the youngster to see it along the road.<\/p>\n

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Thankfully most of them stayed hidden in the vegetation but still very near the road.<\/p>\n

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I couldn’t get a clear shot of many of them…<\/p>\n

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and some were in fairly unattractive settings. I caught this one in mid-yawn.<\/p>\n

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This youngster was perched on wind-blown tumbleweeds blown up against a fence. Given my past experiences with owls of various species\u00a0hung up on\u00a0barbed wire it always makes me a little nervous to see owls, especially young ones, so close to what some refer to as “devil wire” but in this area barbed wire is ubiquitous and unavoidable. Thankfully I haven’t found any owls entangled in it so far this year.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t be happier about the apparent breeding success of Short-eared Owls in northern Utah this year. I wish each and every one of them well.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I’ve said before that this has been a banner year for breeding Short-eared Owls in northern Utah. Here’s more proof.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39860,"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":[334,391,356],"tags":[35,603,481,145,190,279,311],"class_list":["post-39858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-barbed-wire","tag-chick","tag-fledgling","tag-juvenile","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-3714-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-amS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39858","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=39858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}