{"id":6217,"date":"2012-06-26T14:55:12","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T20:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=6217"},"modified":"2012-09-02T15:43:08","modified_gmt":"2012-09-02T21:43:08","slug":"an-itchy-fidgety-burrowing-owl-on-an-unstable-perch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/26\/an-itchy-fidgety-burrowing-owl-on-an-unstable-perch\/","title":{"rendered":"An Itchy, Fidgety Burrowing Owl On A Wiggly Perch"},"content":{"rendered":"

It all started with an itch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Two days ago just as the sun was coming up over the\u00a0Wasatch\u00a0we found this adult Burrowing Owl perched on a dried sunflower.\u00a0 The lower background is the Great Salt Lake.\u00a0 The bird was sunning itself and pretty static and I was hoping for some kind of action.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Then it tried to scratch its face while perched on this spindly and unstable perch and that’s when the action began.\u00a0 (Full disclosure – this shot is a little out-of-order but it shows the\u00a0scratching behavior better than any I got at the very beginning – it tried to scratch the same spot\u00a0on its face several times during this sequence).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Every time the owl tried to scratch its face\u00a0the sunflower stem would move around and throw the bird off-balance so the wings would go out and I got some interesting poses in nice light.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

I was able to get many images\u00a0of the balancing act as it progressed\u00a0but the owl was sidelit so in quite a few of them one or both of the wings\u00a0 and one side of the face were in\u00a0shadow.\u00a0 These are the images with the best pose and light combinations\u00a0that I was able to get.\u00a0 The secondary wing feathers seem to be still growing in from a recent molt.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Even after the bird was through scratching it seemed to have a difficult time staying on the perch so its wings continued to flail intermittently for quite a while.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Most of the time it kept its eye on my pickup and as a photographer I was grateful for the eye contact.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0This shot shows the effect of molting on the wings quite well.\u00a0 The primaries seem to have grown out nicely but the secondaries still have a ways to go (I’m no expert on the subject\u00a0but that’s the way it looks to me).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Then the owl seemed to wave goodbye…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

then turned on the perch and flew off.<\/p>\n

I’m unsure how others will feel about the two-tiered background in these images but it works well for me and I like the clean look at the owl in all these varied poses.<\/p>\n

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

It all started with an itch.   \u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc Two days ago just as the sun was coming up over the\u00a0Wasatch\u00a0we found this adult Burrowing Owl perched on a dried sunflower.\u00a0 The lower background is the Great Salt Lake.\u00a0 The bird was sunning itself and pretty static and I was hoping for some kind of action.     \u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc Then it tried to scratch its face while perched on this spindly and unstable perch and that’s when the action began.\u00a0 (Full disclosure – this shot is a little out-of-order but it shows the\u00a0scratching behavior better than any I got at the very beginning – it tried to scratch the same spot\u00a0on its face several times during this sequence).     \u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc \u00a0Every time the owl tried to scratch its face\u00a0the sunflower stem would move around and throw the bird off-balance so the wings would go out and I got some interesting poses in nice light.     \u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc I was able to get many images\u00a0of the balancing act as it progressed\u00a0but the owl was sidelit so in quite a few of them one or both of the wings\u00a0 and one side of the face were in\u00a0shadow.\u00a0 These are the images with the best pose and light combinations\u00a0that I was able to get.\u00a0 The secondary wing feathers seem to be still growing in from a recent molt.    …<\/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":[334,365,15],"tags":[31,510,62,749,750,748,751,298],"class_list":["post-6217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-burrowing-owls","category-owls","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-athene-cunicularia","tag-burrowing-owl","tag-molt","tag-primary-feathers","tag-scratch","tag-secondary-feathers","tag-sunflower"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-1Ch","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6217","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=6217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}