{"id":4047,"date":"2012-02-05T16:38:22","date_gmt":"2012-02-05T23:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=4047"},"modified":"2012-02-07T20:55:38","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T03:55:38","slug":"just-a-shot-that-i-like-17-short-eared-owl-in-flight-with-a-vole-in-its-beak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/05\/just-a-shot-that-i-like-17-short-eared-owl-in-flight-with-a-vole-in-its-beak\/","title":{"rendered":"Just A Shot That I Like… #17 – Short-eared Owl In Flight With A Vole In Its Beak"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is another image from my time with the Short-eared Owls at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.\u00a0 This male was kept very busy hunting voles and feeding his mate and\u00a0youngsters at the nest.\u00a0\u00a0 Typically I would see him hunting far off, dive for a vole, and if he was successful he’d occasionally eat the vole himself but most often he would return with it to\u00a0a favorite perch in\u00a0the vicinity of the nest – and without exception he would always<\/em> carry the vole in his talons before he got to the perch\u00a0(and always his left<\/em> talon, but\u00a0I covered that topic\u00a0in another post<\/a>).\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"short-eared-owl-7293\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 800, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

However, just before (or just after) he took off from the perch to deliver the meal to his family he would always<\/em> transfer the vole from his talons to his beak.\u00a0 I have a theory as to why he did so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The nest was on the ground at the base of a sagebrush.\u00a0 Whenever the male landed at the entrance to the nest with the vole the female would rush out and very aggressively grab the vole.\u00a0 And I DO mean aggressively!\u00a0 If I’d been him I’d have been afraid to get that close to her with food.\u00a0 So the male would approach the nest very gingerly with the vole in his beak and drop it in front of him and quickly retreat\u00a0as she rushed out.\u00a0 I suspect it was easier for him to avoid a confrontation with her if he could quickly drop the vole in front of him rather than have her try to take it away from him while it was in his talons.\u00a0 Just my theory…<\/p>\n

It was actually quite comical to watch, especially because the male acted so timid around her.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

***\u00a0A note about how I got this image – many folks see a photo of an owl with prey and assume it was baited and in far too many cases they’re absolutely right.\u00a0 I just want to make the point once again that I do not bait – ever!\u00a0 Nor do I do setups or call birds in with electronic devices or any other way.\u00a0 And I don’t use stuffed raptors to lure other raptors into range of the camera.\u00a0\u00a0At the risk of sounding\u00a0self-righteous, in my opinion those\u00a0methods are\u00a0used by far too many photographers who portray themselves as\u00a0nature photographers.\u00a0\u00a0To my way of thinking, to do so isn’t ethical and in my opinion\u00a0such practices produce images that are\u00a0closer to studio or\u00a0zoo photography than to nature photography.\u00a0 Besides, those practices often put the birds at risk and no photograph is ever <\/em>worth that.<\/p>\n

Ok, I’m off of my soap box.<\/p>\n

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

This is another image from my time with the Short-eared Owls at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.\u00a0 This male was kept very busy hunting voles and feeding his mate and\u00a0youngsters at the nest.\u00a0\u00a0 Typically I would see him hunting far off, dive for a vole, and if he was successful he’d occasionally eat the vole himself but most often he would return with it to\u00a0a favorite perch in\u00a0the vicinity of the nest – and without exception he would always carry the vole in his talons before he got to the perch\u00a0(and always his left talon, but\u00a0I covered that topic\u00a0in another post).\u00a0   \u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 800, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc However, just before (or just after) he took off from the perch to deliver the meal to his family he would always transfer the vole from his talons to his beak.\u00a0 I have a theory as to why he did so.\u00a0 The nest was on the ground at the base of a sagebrush.\u00a0 Whenever the male landed at the entrance to the nest with the vole the female would rush out and very aggressively grab the vole.\u00a0 And I DO mean aggressively!\u00a0 If I’d been him I’d have been afraid to get that close to her with food.\u00a0 So the male would approach the nest very gingerly with the vole in his beak and drop it in front of him and quickly retreat\u00a0as she rushed out.\u00a0 I suspect it was easier for him to avoid a confrontation with her if he could quickly drop…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,334,16,392,15,360,356],"tags":[35,532,42,228,241,256,263,279,315],"class_list":["post-4047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-photography-ethics","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-owls","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-bait","tag-baiting","tag-nest","tag-owl","tag-prey","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-13h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4047","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=4047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}