The Barred Owl...

 

On Tuesday, 02-23-21, I was back out walking the woods looking for the owls. Earlier in my walk I spotted the male Great Horned Owl, “Give a Hoot”. Just like yesterday I was by a large oak tree, so when I spotted him in the distance I slowly ducked behind the big oak tree. Again I was hoping to get my camera gear out of my backpack without him watching me. I fooled him yesterday and was able to get a few shots, but today he wasn’t going to be fooled again. Off he flew…

 

I knew the Barred Owl that I’ve photographed many times wouldn’t be in this immediate area where “Give a Hoot” was just perched so I continued on and checked the fringes of this area. Not finding the Barred Owl in several known areas I decided to walk home going out a different way. 

 

While walking out I spotted the Barred Owl perched in a tree a little higher up than I normally see it, but there it was sitting with its back to me. I could tell this is the same Barred Owl that I normally photograph because it didn’t bother to look around at me. I set up my tripod and attached my lens and camera in the spot where I found it. I took several images with its back to me. It felt like it was giving me the cold shoulder routine, since it had been 12 days since I last saw it. It still wouldn’t look my way.

 

I was glad to finally find it because the last time I found it it was right in the middle of the Great Horned Owl’s territory during the prolong cold part of the winter. I was happy to see that the male Great Horned Owl hadn’t eaten it. 

 

I finally moved my tripod more to the front of the owl. I only had a small branch free window to photograph it. After adjusting the tripod I finally got it where I needed it.

 

The area where I found the owl would possibility have some people coming by and I’m sure they would be curious on what I was photographing. In fact, during the 1 1/2 hours I spent with the owl some people walked up to me. One of them had a dog and you can tell which photograph I took while the owl watched the dog. The owl elongates its body and pulls its feathers close to its body trying to get as small as it can.

During my time with the owl I watched the owl regurgitate a pellet. I was putting on some gloves and missed the opportunity to turn on the video. I walked underneath the owl looking for the pellet, but couldn’t find it in the snow which also had some dead branches down on the ground. While underneath the owl I needed to look up to line it up to a spot on the ground. A few times I looked up the owl was looking back down at me. I’m sure it was wondering what I was up to now, but it quickly went back to being uninterested in what I was doing.

 

While back at my camera the owl started looking behind so I moved my tripod to near where I was initially was set up and got a couple more backside images. There are several similar images, but he’s so photogenic and where it was perched I wasn’t able to walk around it like I normally can do to get some shots from different angles.

 

Here are some of the images…