{"id":55328,"date":"2018-01-01T06:21:37","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T13:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=55328"},"modified":"2018-01-01T06:21:37","modified_gmt":"2018-01-01T13:21:37","slug":"a-new-years-lesson-from-a-barn-owl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/01\/a-new-years-lesson-from-a-barn-owl\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Year’s Lesson From A Barn Owl"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before we can photograph owls we have to find them and this wise ol’ Barn Owl taught me a valuable lesson in that regard.<\/p>\n

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1\/1000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

We happened to spot this Barn Owl on New Year’s Day two years ago today\u00a0as it was roosting in a haystack in Box Elder County. It was pretty well hidden in a\u00a0nook between the bales so I had to carefully maneuver my pickup to see it even this well. I was frustrated that the owl never\u00a0once\u00a0opened its eyes while I had it in my\u00a0viewfinder but that tendency is typical of many owls during daytime (this photo was taken in early afternoon).<\/p>\n

During the long drive home I realized that this wasn’t the first time I’d seen a Barn Owl in a haystack (whether the bales are composed of hay or straw I tend to call stacks of them haystacks) so I told myself to never pass a haystack again without checking it out for owls. Since that time I’ve\u00a0seen several more Barn Owls in haystacks so this bird taught me a valuable lesson about locating owls.<\/p>\n

I used to largely ignore stacks of hay or straw but no more.<\/p>\n

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Sometimes I can’t help but think that owls have some sort of Rip Van Winkle syndrome.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1000, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This Western Screech Owl roosts in a tree far across the Salt Lake Valley from my home. In the last few weeks I’ve made 12-15 trips to the tree\u00a0at varying times of day in an effort to catch it with its eyes open with no luck at all. Despite all the human\u00a0activity below the tree (a parking lot for a mini-mall) the owl relentlessly\u00a0sleeps through it all.<\/p>\n

I actually thought about this owl last night at midnight when I was jarred out of a deep sleep by the thunderous fireworks of the crazies in my neighborhood celebrating the New Year.<\/p>\n

Damn, I\u00a0 wish I could sleep like that!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – Happy New Year Everyone. I hope there are\u00a0gobs of\u00a0owls in your 2018!<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Before we can photograph owls we have to find them and this wise ol’ Barn Owl taught me a valuable lesson in that regard.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55329,"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":[344,6,334,3792],"tags":[45,689,3788,3787,2791,3791,3789,309,311,3790],"class_list":["post-55328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barn-owls","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-western-screech-owl","tag-barn-owl","tag-box-elder-county","tag-finding-barn-owls","tag-haystacks","tag-new-year","tag-otus-kennicottii","tag-rip-van-winkle","tag-tyto-alba","tag-utah-2","tag-western-screech-owl"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/barn-owl-4853-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-eoo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55328","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=55328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}