but<\/em> (and it’s a huge “but”) the bird was far away and backlit in low light.<\/p>\nI could have improved the image by playing with adjustments like contrast and saturation during processing but I just didn’t have the time and it’s my inclination to avoid doing so anyway. Besides, I only kept this shot to document the sighting and my defeat.<\/p>\n
Other photographers appeared to be getting closer looks at Barn Owls than this yesterday but my hesitation to approaching them and scaring off the bird and my deep-seated aversion to shooting in crowds prevented it. Sometimes I’m my own worst enemy but “I yam what I yam”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/barn-owl-0624b-ron-dudley-1.jpg\" "\\"barn-owl-0624b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
Something like this image from my archives is always my goal with Barn Owls. The bird was hunting in full daylight (unusual for the species), it was close and coming at me, it’s sharp, there’s a good look at habitat in the image and I even have some light in that deeply set eye.<\/p>\n
Quite a contrast between the two images.<\/p>\n
I’ll say it again – quality bird photography ain’t easy.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n\n- Every time I post an owl in flight and coming at me I feel the need to make it clear that it wasn’t baited. It wasn’t. It’s too bad it’s come to that with bird photography these days, but it most definitely has.<\/em><\/li>\n
- For some unfathomable reason WordPress published this post arbitrarily and before I hit the “publish” button so some early-bird readers saw the post before it was finished. Sorry about that…<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When it comes to Barn Owls in flight sometimes you’re the windshield and sometimes you’re the bug.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69135,"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":[344,334,16,2782],"tags":[45,1008,146,178,309],"class_list":["post-69131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barn-owls","category-birds","category-photography-ethics","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-barn-owl","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-flight","tag-hunting","tag-tyto-alba"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/barn-owl-0624b-ron-dudley-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-hZ1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69131","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=69131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/barn-owl-3402b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"barn-owl-3402b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n