Photos by Harold Wilion

>One of my favorite shots of owls is their stretches. This is the wings over head stretch, and the other popular one, which I will post another day of him, is the one wing stretch. > >Owls can literally "sleep" all day. It's more like a half sleep as they periodically open their eyes, do a little preening and the like, but basically remain in the same state of semi-sleep as I do until a couple hours after my morning coffee. When nap time is over, they go through the ritual of waking. They become very aware by opening their eyes wider, preening, stretching, pooping, and many times, coughing up a pellet. The actual stretch only lasts a few seconds, so it's much tougher to get a decent stretching shot than the normal shot of them sitting on a limb. Also, this usually happens when it is nearing dusk and often in deep woods, so one has to carefully balance shutter speed to stop the fluid motion of the stretch (unless you get a shot at one of the split seconds he stops moving), and ISO. In this instance my shutter was 1/100 and 6400. Many of my shots of this sequence had motion blur. I could have had more usable frames had bumped my to 1/200 and my to 12,500, but then there is the potential for more detail robbing noise than would like. So, if I spot an owl in the woods, if I deem the owl to be unstressed by my presence and know the owl to be tolerant of people like this one, I may stand or sit there for hours to capture those few seconds. I don't know why I find it so easy to sit in the woods for hours doing nothing, waiting for a shot, whereas God forbid get behind a car only going 5 miles above the speed limit, or a long line at the supermarket. > >I find it fascinating that it takes them so long to go from sleep to finally flying off in a normal situation, whereas they of course have the ability to just fly at a moment's notice if a perceived predator should come into the picture.

Photo by Harold Wilion

>Speaking strictly as a photographer, the best thing that can happen when photographing newly fledged owlets is having one fall from a tree. Let me explain before you jump down my throat. I'm not talking about very young owlets that don't have any abilities yet. But once an owl starts branching or fledging, falling on the ground is just a normal, natural part of their development, and if left alone, are fully capable of finding their way back up into a tree. And I can tell you after having watched my first tree walk the other day, it was utterly fascinating and one of the coolest things I've ever seen in nature. Although this wasn't the best photo as my shutter was too slow so it needed some Topaz sharpening, it's a great example of how they "walk" up a tree using their talons and beak with a little help in propulsion and balance by flapping their wings. would say this owl "ran" as opposed to "walked" once he got going and couldn't believe how quick the process was. I was caught off guard so got very few usable shots as he would move out of the frame so quickly. > >I just recently got done seeing a beautiful brood of 4 Barred owls fledge over the course of a few days, and this experience has yielded some of my favorite Barred owl photos ever. I will be posting more in the coming days when I've had a chance to finish going through them, so, stay tuned.

Video of a Barred baby climbing a tree (Not the same person or owl)

I came across an article called Owls — Not Quite as Clever as We Think and after the post about AI generated images and today's is it real or isn't it pic of the Northern Lights , I felt now was the right time to share this article and see some of your opinions on the matter. I feels it's a good conversation starter on where video and camera magic ends vs what we would consider unreal, like the infamous Disney documentary on lemmings.

I'll share a few bits from the article, as you should go to the source for this one. It has some good stories and a lot of accompanying pictures.

From Owls -Not Quite as Clever as We Think, by Steven Bolwell

Here's a bit about why this article intrigued me:

>Wildlife film-makers rarely admit to deception, but we all have to own up to the realities of what is possible in a world that is rapidly disappearing. I don’t think it matters one hoot whether an owl exits a real window, or a fake one, because nothing about the bird’s behaviour changes. Nobody questions an edit in a natural history film, because if an audience wanted to experience natural events in real-time they’d be waiting for days. However, as soon as you tighten up the progress of events the result is a story; and the real problem with telling a story is the disappointment of the viewer should they discover the deception.

I also enjoyed this guy does not appear to be a big fan of owls to start with, and many of his experiences show when he relied on them for his income, the owls could be less than cooperative.

>I am aware that most owl enthusiasts would be singing the praises of experiencing such wonderful birds first hand, but I couldn’t wait to see the back of them. They whole thing had been a time consuming failure. I’d been unintentionally mislead about what these owls would do, and was a long way past the point where I was going to train them to fly through my phoney window. They were the wrong birds for the job and never again did I make such an expensive mistake.

And here is the story why our Flammulated Owl is not happy with the author and his crew:

>A few years later I found myself in the high mountain woodlands of New Mexico filming the small nocturnal flammulated owl. It was a surprise when the scientist working with the birds told me he could chainsaw out the back of the tree they were nesting in and they would remain entirely undisturbed. If you needed to observe or weight young birds this was perhaps an effective way of doing it, but I was sceptical. Chainsawing a tree before the owls started nesting seemed a better option, but how many trees would you need to cut into to guarantee a nest being present later in the year? Predicting such events is very hit and miss.

>The filming occurred more than 35 years ago when a great many species were far less threatened than they are today; but even back then if I hadn’t been confident about what I was doing, I wouldn’t have been filming; and in this case, certainly not without the supervision of a scientific advisor who had been working closely with the birds. I haven’t named him because many will consider this kind of intrusiveness unacceptable; but as none of his birds ever seemed disturbed and the information gleaned went into conserving the species, I didn’t have a problem with it. Nevertheless, I am not sure we need to see every wild bird on the nest just for a television programme, although there is no doubt that this kind of media exposure is the best way to get a general audience informed and proactive in conservation… But don’t try this at home… you might lose an eye! The alternative is to film captive birds on sets and there are many people who are equally disturbed by this alternative dishonesty.

I hope this is enough to get you to check out the full article with either the above or below links, and I encourage you to come back and share your opinions. I feel this article is coming from a much more neutral point of view than is typical for this type of discussion.

Link to full article

As a bonus for scrolling this far, here are the baby Flammies from the chainsaw accessed nest:

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Photo by Alan Murphy Photography

Posted 29 Jan 2024

>Sometimes you just have to take whatever space you can find! I shot these Pygmy Nuthatches over the holidays.

From Alan Murphy

>While photographing a Western Screech-Owl carrying food to its young, I was fortunate to capture the northern lights looks at night. South Eastern Arizona, 30 miles from the Mexican border.

I just came upon this great article and wanted to share it with you all to highlight an issue we probably don't spend much time thinking about.

Two years ago, I had a pair of Carolina Wrens try to build a nest in my favorite hanging plant outside, so I wanted to build them a nesting box to encourage them to not live in my expensive plant. (They ended up not nesting there, but I accidentally killed the plant anyway...) In looking up designs, I became aware that there was not one basic birdhouse that worked for whatever bird felt like using it. There were a lot of requirements to have a safe nest box that I had never considered.

Different birds need different sized holes. They of course need a hole big enough to get in, but also small enough to keep out larger, more aggressive birds and other predators. Some birds need a little landing post to land on before going in the hole, while for others, that landing post can be a liability, again allowing predators to access the nest. It needed and internal volume large enough for a nest, but not too large. It needed drainage to avoid standing water and mold.

One final consideration that also makes sense now, is heating and cooling. Besides having ventilation to keep clean air inside, the material the nest box is made of is very important. You don't want to trap excessive heat, and you don't want something that will remove too much heat also. Much like our own homes, a safe climate is required for the birds' shelter and overall health.

Nesting box plans have been provided by many animal groups for decades, but it appears what has worked to great benefit in the past may now be doing more harm than good. With increasing global temperatures, many house designs are now too hot to safely raise young birds, forcing them outside to early, or being fatal to the growing birds that can't try to escape the heat. Location of the box is also becoming more critical, making a source of water nearby even more essential than before.

This article discusses the problems people are noticing with current nest box practices, and some ideas to work toward correcting them.

I know there are a bunch of climate and conservation communities on Lemmy, so if you feel like cross-posting, feel free, or if you would like me to do it, let me know. I spend most of my time here preparing posts and not exploring as much as I used to, so I'm behind on what all the rest of you have going on here a lot of times. Even if there are some sad things in this article, I hope you enjoy the information it provides.

From Hakai Magazine:

>After scores of barn owls died in overheated nest boxes, conservationists set out to give the birds less heat-prone homes. >by Larry Pynn >May 15, 2024 > >For several scorching days in June 2021, an oppressive heat dome sat over western North America. In the Fraser Valley, inland from Vancouver, British Columbia, the temperature soared to 42.9 °C. The previous June high for the area—set in 1982—was 34.7 °C. Unable to escape the extraordinary heat, billions of marine creatures died—most noticeably barnacles, mussels, oysters, and clams. > >On land, Sofi Hindmarch, a wildlife biologist with the Fraser Valley Conservancy, tallied the heat dome’s horrifying impact on young owls. > >At nine locations across the Fraser Valley, Hindmarch, biologist Dick Clegg, and farmers documented juvenile barn owls that had fled their nest boxes. Like people bolting from an apartment fire, the owlets jumped to escape the overwhelming heat. At seven of those sites, the researchers found corpses strewn on the ground below the nest boxes. These owlets were too young to fly, and their parents did not feed them on the ground. From the eighth location, Hindmarch collected three fallen but uninjured young owls and took them to a rehabilitation facility; they survived and were eventually released. In the ninth case, two young owls that fell from a nest box in a barn managed to land in hay, where their parents continued to feed them until they were old enough to fledge—typically around 60 to 70 days old. > >Along with these grisly findings, the study authors documented 28 dead barn owl babies, aged 20 to 45 days, inside their nest boxes. “For me, it’s extremely rare to find a batch that is almost ready to fledge all dead,” Hindmarch says. > >When she began studying the region’s barn owls more than two decades ago, extreme heat was the last thing on her mind. Barn owls originated in the tropics, and the Fraser Valley sits within the species’ uppermost limit in North America, Hindmarch says. “I honestly never envisioned that overheating would be an issue for them,” she says. “It came as a bit of a surprise. We never used to get temperatures like we do now.” > >While the changing climate and soaring heat are at the heart of this tragedy, part of the problem stems from the very nest boxes the owlets were abandoning. > >Built out of plywood and erected on freestanding poles or affixed to the sides of barns, many nest boxes were exposed to direct sunlight, exacerbating the skyrocketing temperature outside. Hindmarch and her colleague later found that owlets living in pole boxes within 350 meters of the coast, however, survived. At the outlet of the Fraser River, where it dumps into the cooler Strait of Georgia, the 2021 heat dome temperature peaked at 32.4 °C—more than 10 °C cooler than at sites farther inland. > >Nest boxes have long been used to give birds a helping hand, but for Hindmarch, the disaster showed it was time to reconsider their design and placement. > >To that end, Hindmarch and volunteers with the Cascade Bird Box Team have retrofitted about 30 nest boxes in the Fraser Valley study area since the heat dome. They made some of the boxes larger and added ventilation holes. They repositioned other boxes so they’re out of direct afternoon and evening sun. And for the boxes most exposed to sunlight, volunteers covered the old roofs with white sheet metal to reflect the heat, leaving a gap between the two surfaces to improve air circulation. Together, these modifications have lowered the peak daytime summer temperatures inside the boxes by about 5 °C. > >But improving nest-box design is only part of the solution, says Katherine Lauck, a graduate student in ecology at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the barn owl work. Lauck recently coauthored a study showing how birds—much like people seeking the coolness of forests on a hot day—need natural spaces to cope with climate change–induced heatwaves. > >Species such as western bluebirds and tree swallows, Lauck found, fare better when nesting in boxes near shady forests, which act as a buffer from heatwaves. Boxes on open farmland are more susceptible to extreme swings in temperature. > >Human-dominated landscapes, such as farms, says Lauck, also restrict the birds’ access to water and food, making them even more sensitive to temperature extremes. One way to improve birds’ odds of success in a warming world, Lauck says, is to add shade to agricultural land. “Patches of natural vegetation interspersed with crops are going to be really important to allow birds to cope,” Lauck says. > >Hindmarch agrees that updating nest boxes is just one step toward solving this complex problem. Barn owls are adaptable creatures that live on all the world’s continents except Antarctica. Protecting mature trees and dead snags—which offer nesting cavities for barn owls—as well as areas such as wetlands and natural grasslands will go a long way to improving the species’ chances of enduring the juggernaut that is climate change.

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Photos by Sal DeFini

>Eastern Screech Owls. Red Morph is Mom, Grey Morph is Dad. Chicks down deep in the nest under mom. Right now it's sleepy time.

I have been feeling neglectful of some of the more exotic owl species lately. All the GHO and Barred babies have been dominating my feeds recently, so I've been overflowing with that content.

This morning's other post about the owl with 11 step kids was too good to pass up, but I was a little disappointed the photo wasn't very high quality, so I'll share some better pics with you now!

Here are a few owls photographed by Peet van Schalkwyc in South Africa.

This fluffy fellow is a Marsh Owl. It looks a bit like his cousin, the Short Eared Owl. I liked this picture because the little tufts are not usually in their upward position. Much like the Shorty, this owl nests in a grass lined divot on the ground.

From World Bird Sanctuary

>Great Horned Owls, like many raptor species, do not show sexual dimorphism in their plumage between males and females. There is often a size difference, with females generally being larger than the males, but this is not a guaranteed way to tell them apart as there is a overlap in the weight ranges. 23-571 weighs in at 1300g at a healthy weight, which puts them in the weight range of a larger male, but not outside the realm of possibility of a smaller female. > >You can compare 571's size to the 11 surrounding babies that they are currently fostering. Some are smaller and others larger. At this age, you can start to see some mature plumage coming in amongst the fluffy body feathers of the babies. This indicates that the babies have reached their full size and all that remains to grow is the rest of their plumage. > >Our team has suspected that 571 was male, both based on their size and their less aggressive demeanor. The DNA test results are now back and 571 is....... Male! > >23-571 joins Murphy in our club of elite foster dads and needs a name that exemplifies how exceptional he is!! Put your suggestions for a fitting name in the comments below. We will pick our favorite few and then return for a vote. Suggestion period is open until 5/21.

Here's a few highlights from this Flickr gallery from Richard Jackson.

It was hard to just pick a few. There are some unique poses in the gallery, so I encourage you to check it out.

Photo by Barun Kumar Acharya

Taken at Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary in West Bengal, India.

Most owls use their nesting spot as-is when they find one, but the Wikipedia entry for this owl says it lines its nest cavity with plant fibers. I saw this repeated verbatim on a number of websites, but I couldn't locate a source on that, nor any pictures of the inside of a nest, so I'd consider this a "maybe true" fact for now.

Photos by Carol Riddell

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Photos by Mar Acevedo

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From The Raptor Center

>They continue to grow up so fast 🥲 > >This is a barred owl who came into our care as a hatchling only a few days out of its egg. On April 15th, we received a call that this owlet and its siblings were found along a pedestrian trail where their nest had fallen. Unfortunately, this little one was the only survivor and the parents could not be found, likely due to all the foot traffic on this popular trail. > >Luckily, this little one did not sustain any injuries. While we would ideally have released the baby immediately, a foster nest was required, and at that time the known nests we were monitoring did not have young ones of a similar age. Because of this, the baby had to stay in our care through the start of May. > >The young barred owl spent many of its first days with us inside of an incubator to help maintain its body temperature, something its mom would have done by brooding -laying gently on top of it to keep it warm. Staff wore ghillie masks and dim headlamps when feeding to prevent the owlet from imprinting on humans and making any association between where food comes from and people. Lastly, a stuffed companion, and later a mirror, was placed with the owlet, both tools often used to further help young raptors appropriately self identify with their own species while in our care. > >Arriving at 67g and leaving at a whopping 340g, our young barred owl grew at a normal healthy pace and a suitable barred owl foster family was found - a placement that will set this owlet up for success in the wild.

I've mentioned a number of times, it can be a challenge trying to look for awesome pictures for you all every day due to unlabeled, uncited, or just falsely presented pictures.

This one was pretty egregious today. Nothing says woodland camouflage like an owl looking like a toddler sized piece of candy corn!

Now, while there are no challenges for me here determining if this is real, I'm sure countless other people just scrolling will have no clue. To make it worse, I checked out the page's feed, and they have some really good photos that I have shared with you guys, watermarks and/or credit to the photographer removed of course, as well as some things that look cool, but even have me stumped if they're real.

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Is this a nice, albeit highly processed photo of a Bare Shanked Screech, or is it fake? Colors are close but exaggerated, no photographer credit for me to follow up on, so I would pass on sharing this with you guys.

I get recommended dozens of these image groups every time I look on social media for pictures and stories. I'm only subbed to real rescues and wildlife photography groups, but I keep getting recommended anything with an owl shaped image.

Let me know your thoughts on this. Should there be some type of disclaimer on AI images? Do we let people figure it out on their own? How do we keep aggregaters from passing off the images as real? I feel these are questions we should be asking right now.

Would you guys want to have maybe one monthly post of bizarre images I've found during the previous month, or do you get enough of this stuff already on your own you don't want to see any more? I'm forced to look at them, so if you're interested in a Best of the Worst kind of thing, let me know.

Photo by Justin Rogers

>My last image of the 3 owlets all together. 01 left the nest sometime between Thursday night and Friday morning and 02 left the nest while I was there Friday night. When I stopped by briefly today, I didn't see any of them, so there's a chance 03 got brave enough and made the leap too! It was fun while it lasted... hope to see you flying around!

From Raptor Rehab of Kentucky

>This is what we love to see young birds doing when we approach them not wearing a ghost suit to disguise our human features. Defensive posture, and beak clacking! This owl chick will stay with our adult great horned owl, where it will learn to fly and to hunt, before being released to wild at the end of summer.

From Middle Tennessee Raptor Center

>I'm behind on this post but better late than never. > >On April 25th this sweet little screech owl was brought to us after being hit by a car. All I have got to say is this is one tough cookie! > >Screech owls are not very hearty birds of prey. Their size does not work in their favor when it comes to car strikes. This one got very lucky. > >On the night he arrived I did not expect him to make it through us giving him fluids and pain medications. His eye was swollen shut and at that point we didn't even know if he still had one there. He could not stand and had to be propped up with towels so he didn't fall over. > >For several days he just held his head down and was so pitiful. We just kept giving him time, anti-inflammatories, and offering little bits of food. I came to check on him one morning and he was standing up. > >He is continuing to heal and was just upgraded to a larger enclosure. He has no residual effects from his head trauma and he will be able to be released back to the wild soon.

The main photo is from the day of the post, after the recovery.

From Hoo's Woods

>This baby Great Horned owl, is showing off her seriously stylish pants. She was admitted into our care last night. Her sibling Mo sitting next to her was admitted last week with injuries he sustained after high winds blew him from their nest. Now together again, they are both in good health, and will be rehomed this week. > >We've been seeing a lot of "brancher" Great Horned and Barred Owls lately. These youngsters are at a stage where they perch on branches, sometimes taking a tumble to the ground. It's easy to mistake them for injured birds because they haven't quite mastered flight yet. Placing them back on a branch away from harm allows their parents to continue feeding them, and in just about a week, they'll be flying. > >Young owls learn essential survival skills from their parents, ensuring they thrive in the wild. However, there are situations where intervention is necessary, and we are here to assist. If you have any questions or uncertain if intervention is needed, please reach out to us. We do our best to get these birds back to the wild.

Photo by Ruth Neal

>The day before the fledge. Barred Owl, Owlet. The owls of Franklin County [Ohio]. 4/24