{"id":54987,"date":"2017-12-24T04:58:56","date_gmt":"2017-12-24T11:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=54987"},"modified":"2017-12-24T05:47:23","modified_gmt":"2017-12-24T12:47:23","slug":"juvenile-burrowing-owls-the-clowns-of-the-bird-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/24\/juvenile-burrowing-owls-the-clowns-of-the-bird-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Juvenile Burrowing Owls – The Clowns Of The Bird World"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the New Year fast approaching I’m feeling more than a little\u00a0nostalgic about Feathered Photography so today\u00a0I present a\u00a0blast from the past. I’ve now been blogging for more than\u00a0seven years and this post was one of my earliest\u00a0ventures into the blogosphere\u00a0(#17 out of 2,118 total posts to date).<\/em><\/p>\n

Some\u00a0of these photos remain among my favorites of all time but my blogging “style” back then was decidedly primitive and unrefined so\u00a0for this version I’ve cleaned up some of the most glaring awkwardness, edited the text and\u00a0fixed\u00a0the\u00a0original distracting\u00a0formatting.\u00a0Veteran blog followers will have seen some of these images before.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Of the many bird species I’ve photographed\u00a0juvenile\u00a0Burrowing Owls\u00a0exhibit the most personality by far. Their repertoire of silly\u00a0antics,\u00a0goofy poses, stretches, yawns and\u00a0grooming behaviors are a photographers dream. And once they\u00a0feel comfortable in your presence they may even allow you to photograph them for long periods without flying off, retreating to their burrow or showing any signs of\u00a0nervousness. But to gauge that you have to be able to read their behaviors and it\u00a0almost always requires the use of high-powered lenses so we don’t\u00a0feel the need to approach them too closely.\u00a0We should always<\/em> be extremely careful to avoid disturbing them in any way.<\/p>\n

But you have to find them first and that typically isn’t easy.<\/p>\n

The antics of juveniles are much more exaggerated than those of adults so all of the images I’ll present here are of\u00a0young birds. Some of these\u00a0photos were taken in less than ideal conditions (harsh light, shadows, clutter) but I think they illustrate the goofball personalities of these birds well.<\/p>\n

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\"Giving<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s difficult to resist our anthropomorphic tendencies (ascribing “human” emotion or motivation to non-human species) when it comes to juvenile\u00a0Burrowing Owls so I won’t even try. Besides, it’s my contention that birds and some other critters have many of the same emotions and feelings\u00a0we do.<\/p>\n

This youngster looks to be\u00a0highly suspicious or dubious\u00a0of me, even challenging or\u00a0angry,\u00a0but in reality\u00a0I’m confident\u00a0it was only curious.<\/p>\n

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\"Wing<\/a><\/p>\n

With this “they\u00a0went that-a-way” pose this image always reminds me of a famous Lewis and Clark painting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Topsy<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Juveniles\u00a0practice their parallax skills often.\u00a0It involves bobbing, twisting and rotating\u00a0their heads so their eyes can view an object (in this case me in my pickup) from different positions. This allows them\u00a0to more accurately determine distance to that object. It’s serious business for\u00a0owls but to us it can sure look silly. And adorable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\"Reaction<\/a><\/p>\n

One sunny and hot August morning I was photographing a pair of juveniles when a single small\u00a0cloud passed overhead and it started to rain. The reaction of\u00a0both birds to the sudden raindrops was\u00a0absolutely hilarious to watch. The second bird was doing the same thing just out of\u00a0frame to the left. At first they looked up in seeming surprise as if to say “Whoa, what was that?” Then they spread their wings\u00a0to apparently enjoy their cool, brief shower.<\/p>\n

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\"Ecstasy\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then both young birds\u00a0appeared to go into ecstasy over the rain.\u00a0They crouched down on the perch, spread their\u00a0wings and tails, lowered their heads, closed their eyes and literally trembled and shook in apparent delight. I’m\u00a0confident it was just bathing instinct taking over but it sure looked like more than that and it\u00a0was\u00a0highly entertaining to watch. I love this look at the long “eyelashes” and\u00a0white eyelids.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"Grooming<\/a>You never know what interesting or appealing pose you may catch a Burrowing Owl in while it’s preening (grooming). It\u00a0typically happens very fast and I often don’t even know what I’ve captured until I get home and review the images.\u00a0Sometimes there’s a pleasant surprise, as in this photo. Usually\u00a0both eyes are closed during this maneuver but this time I got lucky.<\/p>\n

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\"One<\/a><\/p>\n

Juveniles do a lot of stretching,\u00a0some of it\u00a0quite creative.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"Sibling<\/a><\/p>\n

The youngster on the right could barely stay awake. I must have bored him\/her but it’s sibling had better\u00a0tastes in humans and was understandably\u00a0fascinated by me. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"It's<\/a><\/p>\n

While this bird may look threatening, even angry, in reality it was simply overcome by a yawn as it was checking me out from close range.\u00a0This image has some\u00a0flaws but I’ve always liked it anyway.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

This photo\u00a0is obviously not a quality shot\u00a0because I had very harsh and contrasty\u00a0light but I decided to include it\u00a0because this might be the most unusual pose\u00a0I’ve seen from a Burrowing Owl of any age.\u00a0The\u00a0youngster literally sat down on its rump with its tail\u00a0hanging down behind the perch and parallaxed me for quite a while. Much of its weight is on its butt rather than its legs. The\u00a0photo\u00a0makes me smile every time I see it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Great<\/a><\/p>\n

Juvenile Burrowing Owls\u00a0make wonderful subjects but like all birds\u00a0they can be frustrating too, especially when they turn their backs on the camera while performing a\u00a0spectacular pose.<\/p>\n

The “end”.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – Merry Christmas to all my readers!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

These are some of my favorite Burrowing Owl photos of all time.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909,"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":[3,393,334,365],"tags":[31,510,3766,62,152,3767,168,243,255,297,330],"class_list":["post-54987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bathing-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-burrowing-owls","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-athene-cunicularia","tag-bathing-in-the-rain","tag-burrowing-owl","tag-funny-poses","tag-goofy-poses","tag-grooming","tag-parallax","tag-preening","tag-stretch","tag-yawn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/burrowing-owl-01441.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-eiT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54987","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=54987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}