Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Owl in the sun









There will be more images from Sunday, but yesterday's owl adventure gets the attention this morning. This was the first time I'd seen the owl in sun with real blue sky behind it. I even got confused. What's that blue stuff? Digital noise? No! Real sky for a change. It's still difficult to capture with the camera because of the way the owl is hidden.
I stayed until about 1pm, came back here to do some work, returned to the Rambles at 3pm and by that time the owl had relocated to an even harder shoot-spot. While searching for the owl I spotted the gorgeous fox sparrow, seed-eating, very elusive.

The last two images were shot when it was getting very dark at ISO 6400. We saw the owl bring up a pellet, but could not find the pellet, probably lost in amongst the leaves on the ground. The camera was seeing details that my eyes could not see. The sky was already growing dark. To my naked eyes all I saw was a black form. A small group of birders gathered and waited. "It's going to go soon". "Oh, look, it's moving". And then it was gone, 5pm, silent departure. And the birders departed too, equally silently.
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