{"id":41608,"date":"2016-08-20T06:04:06","date_gmt":"2016-08-20T12:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=41608"},"modified":"2016-08-20T08:10:30","modified_gmt":"2016-08-20T14:10:30","slug":"great-horned-owl-in-the-bear-river-wetlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/20\/great-horned-owl-in-the-bear-river-wetlands\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Horned Owl In The Bear River Wetlands"},"content":{"rendered":"

This adult Great Horned Owl at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge yesterday morning surprised me on several levels.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Great Horned Owls are primarily nocturnal perch hunters and in\u00a0the past when I’ve found this species in the daytime they’ve nearly\u00a0always been tucked away and sleeping in some shady roost. But this one was mostly out in the open and appeared to be hunting at the base of a thick stand of phragmites along the auto tour route at the refuge. I spent 46 minutes with the bird (beginning at 9:18\u00a0AM)\u00a0and it never did sleep or show any signs of sleepiness.<\/p>\n

It would stay in one spot for a while as it\u00a0appeared to be scanning the dead phrag stems and the nearby water for prey\u00a0and then it would walk or hop a relatively short distance and do the same thing again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great1\/1000, f\/8, ISO 250, 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

One time it flew a hundred yards or so up the canal and then repeated the apparent hunting behavior though I never did see it make an attempt at prey.<\/p>\n

I thought it was somewhat unusual that this owl nearly always kept its ear tufts (“horns”) flattened down on its head instead of erect.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 7D, Canon EF-S17-85mm f\/4-5.6 IS USM @ 66mm<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This\u00a0photo gives the viewer a better sense of habitat – you can see the owl (and its reflection)\u00a0slightly below center of the image.<\/p>\n

Finding this beautiful owl in such a place\u00a0was an unexpected treat. I believe this was the first time I’ve\u00a0photographed a Great Horned Owl in a marshy environment though they’re known to occasionally occupy such habitats.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

This adult Great Horned Owl at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge yesterday morning surprised me on several levels.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41613,"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":[338,334,8,405],"tags":[49,547,822,159,996,175,178,3068,250,3069],"class_list":["post-41608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-great-horned-owls-owls","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-bubo-virginianus","tag-ear-tufts","tag-great-horned-owl","tag-habitat","tag-horns","tag-hunting","tag-marsh","tag-phragmites","tag-wetlands"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/great-horned-owl-0214b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-aP6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41608","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=41608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}