{"id":66154,"date":"2018-11-24T05:49:05","date_gmt":"2018-11-24T12:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=66154"},"modified":"2018-11-24T07:45:56","modified_gmt":"2018-11-24T14:45:56","slug":"brood-patch-of-a-female-short-eared-owl-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/24\/brood-patch-of-a-female-short-eared-owl-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Brood Patch Of A Female Short-eared Owl In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally I rerun a favorite older blog post because few current readers have ever\u00a0seen it. This one was published on December 20, 2012. For this version I’ve edited the text, cleaned up the formatting and added a link to an interesting and relevant photo. And to be honest, part of the reason I’m reposting it is because I’m so proud of the two images I’ve included here. I’ll explain why I’m so happy to have them\u00a0at the end of the post.<\/em><\/p>\n

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One of the primary functions of feathers is insulation and they’re very, very\u00a0good at preventing heat loss.\u00a0But this efficiency\u00a0presents a\u00a0serious\u00a0problem for birds\u00a0– how to keep the eggs sufficiently warm during incubation since feathers act as a barrier to heat transfer from parent to eggs.\u00a0Typical bird body temperature is about 104 degrees F. and the ideal incubation temperature for their eggs is very close to normal human body temperature – 98.6 degrees F.<\/p>\n

That dilemma has been solved by most bird species\u00a0through the evolution of the\u00a0“brood\u00a0patch” – an area\u00a0of belly skin that loses\u00a0its feathers near the end of the egg-laying period. As the feathers are lost, supplementary blood vessels engorge the\u00a0skin of the patch\u00a0so that hot blood is brought to the surface.\u00a0Amazingly, the parent can even shut down blood flow to this region when that bird is off the nest. When the parent returns to the eggs for incubation he\/she typically goes through settling movements that bring the brood patch into gentle contact with the eggs and keeps them sufficiently warm (or cool enough in very hot climates).<\/p>\n

The patch may be large or small, depending on a variety of factors including how many eggs are incubated.\u00a0Some species have a single patch in the middle of the belly, others\u00a0have one on\u00a0each side and some even have three.<\/p>\n

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Typically the patch is hidden by feathers and extremely\u00a0difficult to observe in wild birds, particularly in flight, but I have several images of a female Short-eared Owl where it’s clearly visible. This female had two chicks that she was trying to keep warm\u00a0during a typically cold Montana spring. The male was bringing food to the nest and she very seldom left it but occasionally when it warmed up later in the day she would go out for a little exercise.<\/p>\n

This shot clearly shows the brood patch, though the image quality suffers a little\u00a0because of low light and the\u00a0resulting\u00a0slow shutter speed.<\/p>\n

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On one occasion\u00a0she became impatient while waiting for the male to deliver a vole to the nest\u00a0so she went out and took it away from him.\u00a0Here she’s returning to the nest with\u00a0that vole for the chicks.\u00a0Sharpness is better in this shot but it’s a little difficult to separate the patch from the foot carrying the vole.\u00a0The part of the\u00a0patch we can see\u00a0is slightly more pink and above the left\u00a0foot that is clutching the vole.<\/p>\n

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An extreme crop of the previous photo\u00a0allows a\u00a0better look at the right side of the patch.\u00a0In owls the patch appears to have two lobes\u00a0– the right one is obvious but\u00a0we can barely see some of the left lobe.<\/p>\n

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In most bird\u00a0species the feathers covering the belly are lost automatically (through hormonal control)\u00a0just before brooding but ducks and geese must actively\u00a0pluck the feathers, which are then used to line the nest. Pelicans, gannets and boobies have no patch so their eggs are cradled in their webbed feet and warmed\u00a0from below and above. In species where both parents incubate each sex develops a brood patch but if only the female incubates, as in these owls,\u00a0the male doesn’t develop a patch.<\/p>\n

In precocial\u00a0species (active soon after hatching, ducks and geese for example) the insulating feathers over the patch grow back soon after the eggs have hatched since the chicks leave the nest almost immediately after hatching. But in altricial birds (helpless for an extended time after hatching,\u00a0songbirds for example) the regrowth of feathers over the patch is delayed and the patch remains functional\u00a0for\u00a0the entire time the chicks are brooded in the nest, as in these Short-eared Owls.<\/p>\n

I thought some might be interested in\u00a0this photo of a female Snowy Owl<\/a> taken by Ly Dang showing her brood patch. Prepare yourself, it looks a little…\u00a0shall we say\u00a0strange\u00a0in this presentation.<\/p>\n

I feel extremely fortunate to have taken\u00a0several photos of\u00a0an owl in flight showing the brood patch. Most photos of wild birds showing the patch are of\u00a0birds in hand and that always makes me uncomfortable because handling wild birds is stressful for them, without exception.<\/p>\n

And photos of birds in flight showing the patch are almost nonexistent so I have a special fondness for these two shots, despite their slight softness.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I feel extremely fortunate to have taken several photos of a female Short-eared Owl in flight that clearly show her brood patch.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66157,"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":[334,392,1493,391,360,356],"tags":[4344,35,4342,60,137,4340,4341,4343,279],"class_list":["post-66154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","category-short-eared-owls","tag-altricial-birds","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-bird-body-temperature","tag-brood-patch","tag-female","tag-function-of-feathers","tag-incubation-temperature","tag-precocial-birds","tag-short-eared-owl"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/short-eared-owl-7907-brood-patch1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-hd0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66154","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=66154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}