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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/short-eared-owl-1324b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"short-eared-owl-1324b-ron-dudley\\"")
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1\/1250, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 400mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Five years ago this month I found two young Short-eared Owl siblings next to a road in a fairly remote area of northern Utah. Over the years I’ve seen and photographed quite a few young SEOW’s but this one immediately caught my eye because of ‘his’ unusually dark coloring, around his eyes and face in particular but elsewhere in his plumage too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 400mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Such a dark bird against a fairly dark background doesn’t stand out very well so I cropped this photo pretty tight on the owl. I love the way his bright yellow eyes pop out of the blacks of his facial disc.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/800, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 164mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n I backed off my smaller zoom lens to 164mm so I could get both youngsters in the frame for comparison. Here both owls are parallaxing my pickup, probably because of camera shutter sounds. Cute little rascals aren’t they.<\/p>\n The owl on the left looks like virtually all other young SEOW’s I’ve seen but his sibling’s darker coloration is unique in my experience. For folks who have never before seen SEOW youngsters this age the difference in coloration between the two may not seem dramatic but that’s almost the first thing I noticed when I pulled up next to them in my pickup.<\/p>\n Normally I would never, ever get this close to young owls but these two were right on the edge of the road so I had no practical choice but to get close. Besides, I actually wanted to shoo them back into the dense vegetation behind them so they had less chance of ending up as road kill. But even with me only a few feet away they were calm and trusting and they held their ground. It was very early in the morning and that time of day there was no traffic on the road to speak of so I left them in place to look for other birds and hoped for the best.<\/p>\n When I returned a couple of hours later they were gone. I hope they’re still out there somewhere and this time of year I also hope they’re making babies.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This youngster immediately stood out.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/short-eared-owl-1326b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"short-eared-owl-1326b-ron-dudley\\"")
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