Wet Short-eared Owl

Image Critiques Avian Critiques
1

I had gone into the marsh during the high tide. There was a lot of it flooded to a foot os so deep. While photographing a some trumpeter swans feeding and socializing in the shallows there was a loud splashing nose close by, and I investigated. To my surprise there was a short-eared owls flapping its way from one small clump of grass to another. It stopped temporarily

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Description:

This photo is cropped to 80% of ff width. I partially removed a bright grass stock just to our right of owls left eye. If I tried moving to my left I ended up with a different grass over the right eye. After taking a few shots at the first location the owl flapped his way to another clump of grass. This second photo is of that location. Here both of the owls eyes are closed and it is pretty relaxed. This photo is a full size vertical cropped from a horizontal.

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Pertinent technical details or techniques:

Is this a composite?
R5, 500mm + 1.4 TE, f/5.6, 1/800, ISO3200

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1 Like
2

What a couple of cool images, David. The first is really excellent and you did a fine job of removing the offending “limb”. Very well done.

3

Oh boy, this bird really looks soaked. The first image nicely shows how well camouflaged these birds are. Nice work ! Hans

4

Excellent peekaboo view of this short-eared owl. Good job on extracting the most important parts of the image from the environment. But this is where they live and it is really difficult to remove the distractions. Nice color palette.

5

Thanks for the comments. It was very interesting behavior for the owl for sure.