{"id":86280,"date":"2020-06-14T05:35:41","date_gmt":"2020-06-14T11:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=86280"},"modified":"2020-06-14T06:41:41","modified_gmt":"2020-06-14T12:41:41","slug":"juvenile-burrowing-owl-game-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/14\/juvenile-burrowing-owl-game-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Juvenile Burrowing Owl – Game On!"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s as if this little guy was deliberately putting my skills as a photographer to the test.<\/p>\n

I’ve reached back into my files for this series, taken on June 24, 2015 in Box Elder County. I posted several of these photos years ago but most of them are new to my blog and they’ve never been seen as a series. <\/em><\/p>\n

Most of them were taken at or near 1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 640.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On that morning this juvenile Burrowing Owl and several of ‘his’ siblings were out enjoying the morning sun and testing their takeoff, flight and landing skills by going on short flights. Since it happened five years ago I can’t remember for sure if all of these photos are of the same sibling but I believe they are because they’d often take off and then return to the same perch.<\/p>\n

As per usual with me one of my primary goals was takeoff and flight shots but Burrowing Owls are small and quick so more often than not I was too slow pulling the trigger.<\/p>\n

But this little guy gave me a wink almost like he was putting me on notice that the action was about to begin.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He bowed his head as if to mislead me about what his plans were and then…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

took off as if he’d been shot from a cannon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I was able to get a single sharp flight shot without clipping any body parts. In my book that’s passing the test. With flying colors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But four minutes later he was on the same perch again and ready to see if I could repeat my performance. This time he tried to make it a little harder for me by looking around in different directions so he wouldn’t signal his direction of takeoff.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Just before he launched he gave me a sly look suggesting that he had confidence that he’d outfox me this time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But I got lucky and started my burst of shots at just the right time so I was able to get another takeoff and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

flight shot. These two look almost identical to the first takeoff. In fact their similarity is uncanny.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Six minutes later he’d returned to the perch for yet another go at it.<\/p>\n

But this time one of his siblings out of frame to the left took off and this was his reaction. He decided to follow that bird in flight so…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

he quickly turned on his perch and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

took off in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Because his takeoff direction was completely unexpected I didn’t have enough room on the left for an ideal composition in the only flight shot I got. But he’s sharp and I didn’t clip any body parts so I was more than happy with the results.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Obviously I was being a little facetious with some of my narration for this post. I’m sure he had no intention to test my photography skills. His only interest in me was to make sure I wasn’t a threat and perhaps I was also an object of his curiosity.<\/p>\n

Sometimes just for the fun of it I take tongue in cheek liberties with my narration. It’s what I do.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

It’s as if this little guy was deliberately putting my skills as a photographer to the test.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86292,"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":[334,365],"tags":[510,689,62,146,190,1396,2738],"class_list":["post-86280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-burrowing-owls","tag-athene-cunicularia","tag-box-elder-county","tag-burrowing-owl","tag-flight","tag-juvenile","tag-siblings","tag-takeoff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/burrowing-owl-4127-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mrC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86280","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=86280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}