Category: Miscellaneous

Burrowing Owls of Antelope Island

 I simply adore watching and photographing Burrowing Owls.  They show more personality and cute little quirks than any other avian species I’ve photographed – especially the juveniles.  There are usually three problems with shooting these birds though – finding them in the first place, getting close enough to them for high quality photographs without disturbing their normal activities or making them nervous and catching them out in the open or on an elevated perch so that the vegetation that usually surrounds their burrows doesn’t obscure the birds.  Two summers ago a family of these owls had their burrow right along the road on the Antelope Island causeway.   They were obviously very accepting of all the traffic so getting close without disturbing them was no problem – I’d just pull up on the road edge close to their burrow and stay in my pickup to photograph them.   I photographed them for almost two weeks and I’ve kept a ridiculous number of those images- just can’t make myself delete many of them.  The family consisted of both parents and four juveniles.  I spent most of my time photographing the juvies – they’re just so vivacious, spunky and full of life that they make wonderful subjects.  The problem at this burrow site was two-fold – lots of obscuring vegetation and then when they did perch up higher it was usually on some unattractive pieces of broken concrete adjacent to the burrow.    1/1250, f/9, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc Occasionally one of the juveniles would be perched on this rock when we…

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The Trouble With Harems

Mia and I spent most of this week on a camping/photography trip to Flaming Gorge, Utah and we had some wonderful photographic opportunities with pronghorns.  We camped on an isolated peninsula and it happened that a buck pronghorn was using the topography of the peninsula to help him keep control of his very large harem of females.  The herd consisted of the lone buck and many females – both adults and juveniles.  The male was in full rut and frantic to keep his does together and prevent several other males from running off with them.  Does have varying mating strategies.  Some does, called “sampling” females, will visit several males during the breeding season if allowed to do so.  Others, referred to as “inciting females”, behave as sampling females until they come into estrus when they move off from the males which incites fights and aggressive competition between the males.  These females always immediately mate with the winning male.   Some females employ a third strategy where they join a single male and remain with him throughout estrus – these does are called “quiet” females.     Canon 7D, 1/800, f/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This poor buck was trying to control at least 28 females and was struggling mightily to do so.  One evening we were at the bottom of a string of small hills just as the sun was setting (thus the warm, golden light in these photos).  The buck and his females were strung out on the crest of several of the hills and one of the does was giving him a hard time by…

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Avocets and Phalaropes in a Hailstorm

Recently I’ve been tardy in posting on this blog because Mia and I just recently returned from one of our favorite camping/photo destinations – four days at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.  This trip was a memorable one (as they always are at RRL).      Canon 40D, 1/200, f/16, ISO 500 @35mm, ev 0.0 5:30 pm.  We were photographing American Avocets and Wilson’s Phalaropes on one of the refuge ponds when we looked behind us to the west and saw this impressive storm heading our way.  It was really dumping on the foothills surrounding the valley and we figured things might get interesting so we decided to stay at the pond and see what happened.  Good thing we were shooting from my pickup or we’d have been in trouble…     Canon 40D, 1/250, f/16, ISO 500 @17mm, ev +0.33 5:52 pm.  The slow-moving storm took a while to get to us but when it did it was impressive.  It began to rain very hard.  It was so intense that neither of us could keep water off of our lenses – in spite of the 7″ long hood on the end of my 500mm lens.   I love my new Ford F-150 pickup but the engineers did a poor job on the roof rain channels and water simply poured in off the roof whenever a window was down.  As you can see in my side mirror, Mia (who shoots from the back seat) has taken a temporary respite from the downpour and has her lens pulled in and her window…

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White Pelican Stretching Pouch in Flight.

American White Pelicans are known to do some pretty strange things with their pouch – one of them is pouch stretching (I’ve been unable to find an official term for the behavior).      A four year old image – I no longer have the original file so can’t access exif data They pull their head back and force their very flexible pouch down over their neck and upper chest in a process that looks, well.. bizarre.  I don’t think this behavior is particularly unusual as I’ve seen and photographed it several times.  According to Birds of North America Online the function of this display is “uncertain”.      Canon 7D, 1/5000, f/6.3, ISO 500 However, these birds are also fully capable of pulling the bottom of their pouch up above the level of the lower mandibles without having to pull the pouch down over their neck.   I don’t fully understand how they’re able to do this since the pouch itself is non-muscular.  Internet research on the subject has been unproductive.   I assume there must be some form of bony or cartilaginous rod that extends from the throat area down the middle of the bottom of the pouch about half way to the tip of the bill.  With muscular control of the base of that extension in the throat area they would be able to raise the bottom of the pouch above “horizontal”.  I’ve seen them do it twice – the  first time without a camera while the bird was perched.  But the second time, a couple of weeks ago, it was done in flight which…

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Handedness in Short-eared Owls

Last summer Mia and I spent four days photographing a family of Short-eared Owls in Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.  There were two baby owls in a nest under a sagebrush guarded over constantly by the female while the male hunted and brought in food.   That food in every instance that we saw was a vole (mouse-like rodent).  Many of the photos I took were of the male in flight, returning to the area of the nest with a vole in his talons. Male with vole It wasn’t until I returned home and began processing the images that I began to notice that the male always seemed to carry the vole in its left foot.  This piqued my curiosity about something I’d never considered – do some birds show “handedness” – the preference of using one limb as opposed to the other?  Could this male owl, or perhaps all Short-eared Owls, be left-“handed”?   Once again, carrying the vole in the left foot So I decided to do an inventory of my images of these birds to see what would turn up.  After culling my photos of these owls from this trip I had 271 photos to go through.  Most of those were flight shots of the male and in more than half of them he was carrying a vole.  My goal was to try to determine how many “sorties” he made with a vole that I had photographed (I often got multiple shots of the male with the same vole in the same sortie) and determine what percentage of the time he…

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Burrowing Owls – Clowns of the Bird World

  Of the many bird species I’ve photographed, Burrowing Owls by far show the most “personality”.  Their repertoire of silly antics, funny poses, stretches, yawns and grooming behaviors are a photographers dream.  And once they feel comfortable in your presence they will often allow you to photograph them for a very long time without flying off or retreating to their burrow.  But you have to find them first… The antics of juveniles are even more exaggerated than those of adults.  Most of the images I will present here are of juveniles.  Some of the shots were taken in less than ideal conditions (harsh light, shadows, clutter) but I think they illustrate the goofball personalities of these birds well. Giving the photographer a suspicious look It’s difficult to resist being anthropomorphic (ascribing human emotion or motivation to non-human species) when it comes to Burrowing Owls so I won’t even try.  This juvenile looks very suspicious of me but in reality I suspect that it was only curious.   Wing-stretch with lifted foot, or “They went that-a-way!”    Topsy  turvy owl Juveniles practice their parallax skills regularly.  It involves bobbing and twisting their heads so their eyes can view an object (in this case me) from different positions.  This allows them to better determine distance to that object.   I’m sure it’s serious business for the owls but to us it can sure look silly.  And adorable.  Reaction to sudden and unexpected rain One sunny and hot August morning I was photographing a pair of juveniles when a single cloud passed overhead and…

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