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:

Hunting Success!

Well here's another post on the Barred Owls in our yard. Tonight we witnessed two of the immature owls fighting over a kill. They were right out in front of the house on the ground yelling at each other. I grabbed my camera and ran out onto the deck only to discover that I didn't have the CF card in my camera! So I ran back into the house, grabbed the card and dashed back outside only to find that the owls had moved off to the side of the house and into the woods. I moved that way slowly and into the woods. They were so distracted with each other that I didn't even warrant a look until I got in closer. As soon as he turned to look at me I stopped and took the following shots. The shots show what looks to be a rabbit.

This shows the owl with its wings covering what appears to be a rabbit:


Here the owl was moving up the limb of the tree and you can clearly see the rabbit:


Another photo of the owl and its prey:


I snapped this photo of the owl flying away, not the greatest shot but I thought it was worth posting:


All of the shots were taken at a high ISO in the woods so they are a bit noisy and not terribly in focus, but it sure was fun to witness this exchange.

Barred Owls Hunting!

OK, so my wife and I just spent the last 20 minutes watching the 3 immature Barred Owls attempt to catch a squirrel that was feeding on the ground under our bird feeders. At first the squirrel seemed to pay no attention to the one owl that was about 12 feet off the ground and right next to our deck (about 20 feet from the squirrel). We watched the owl watch the squirrel. Eventually the owl swooped out of the tree and down after the squirrel. He missed. Then he tried again from a different spot. Then the second owl made his attempt and also missed. By this point the third owl is in the mix and they attempted to "corner" the squirrel on the tree. Honestly they never really got that close with the exception of the very first attempt. You can tell they are still a bit awkward in flight compared to the adults, but they were trying their best. :)

We were watching these owls learn how to hunt! How cool is that?!

Right after all three attempted to corner the squirrel the each in turn landed on a downed tree on the ground. I just took these shots a few minutes ago. They are both taken at ISO 3200/f5.6 and 1/30 of second hand-held. They are heavily cropped, pretty noisy, and definitely blurry. However, this was a really cool moment for both my wife and I and it's worth sharing here. I hope you all enjoy it as well.

The Three:


The Two:



Here's another shot I took this morning:

Yard Birds

Well, we have had a number of new birds in our yard over the last couple weeks. We have had an Indigo Bunting show up 3 times which has been quite a treat and we have also had a Three-toed Woodpecker. We get a lot of woodpeckers on the suet log and when he showed up, we weren't sure what it was. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera for either of these birds. However, I did get some shots of 2 of the 3 Barred Owl owlets:

Barred Owl:

Published in Birders World Magazine

So I was told this morning by my father that a photo I had submitted to Birders World magazine was published in their Your View section. I'm excited about this because it marks the 5th photo I have had published in the last year. I have had 4 photos in Naturescape News, and now a 5th in Birders World. As of right now, I still have not seen the magazine, hopefully I'll be getting a copy soon, in fact I may have to run out over lunch and buy a few extra copies. By the way, here is the blog post with the photo that was published. Barred Owl.

UPDATE: I was able to pick up the magazine and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. My father was quite excited to get his magazine in the mail and while paging through find my photo!

Barred Owl

Over the last few years we have had a pair of Barred Owls living in our neighborhood and I've taken numerous photos of them. At Christmas this year, we had the family over and the owl flew into our yard and landed in a tree right outside our bedroom window. The entire family had a great opportunity to see this wonderful bird. After everyone had gotten there fill of watching the bird, I snuck out the front door and around the house and took a series of pictures. Here's one that I really liked:

Barred Owl: