Barred Owl Madness!

So I had a few minutes today and decided to take some "test" shots with my new camera from the deck at the birds around my feeder. So I took a few shots, and then there wasn't much activity so I was about to head back in when I caught a slight movement in the corner of my eye. I turned to find a Barred Owl about 40 feet away . . . he had been there the whole time I was on the deck! So I started to take few shots, moved a foot to my left to get a better angle and he started to fly. I thought, "Well I blew that!", except he flew directly at me and landed only about 20 feet away from me! He landed on the branch and stared down at me. To make a long story short, he spent about 1 1/2 hours sitting on the branch occasionally closing his eyes. It looked like he was quite content, and I sure wasn't bothering him. I think I was more of curiosity than a threat. As you can imagine I took a bunch of shots. I'll post a few of the ones I liked that found with a cursory look at the ones I took. It will take a bit longer to get through all of them (I might have been a bit shutter happy with such a great bird and the new camera). I'm sure I'll post more over the coming days!

You can see larger versions of these at my Flickr account if you click on them.

Barred Owl (These 2 shots are not cropped) :





Talons, Talons, and more Talons: