I first heard the screachy raspy screams in late spring. I’d heard these middle-of-the-night calls before. They are the begging vocalizations of young Great Horned Owls. They’ve nested on my 5 acres before, but this time the nest was near my cabin. I could never find the nest but many times in April and May I heard the raucous caterwauling of a mob of crows harassing the adults. Occasionally a Raven would join in the thuggery. Then in mid May and early June I heard the raspy calls of not one chick, but three! All were out of the nest but still begging for food from mom and dad…Teenagers cleaning out the fridge on a daily basis. One day, walking from the house to the cabin I found two of the young perched at the cabin…One on the roof, the other on an overhanging branch. I went back to the house to get Bridget and Birk and we refound one further off in the woods. Still begging but as you can see from the photo, nearly in adult plumage with some downy feathers still. We watched through the scope and then I took some photos with the 400mm, then the 400 plus 1.4 extender, then I thought, what the heck, I’ll try and stack the 2x extender on the 1.4 extender for some video. This images is taken with the 400 and both extenders…an equivalent of a 1800mm lens! With a little selective work in Photoshop and Aperture, it looks pretty good. Just because some pros say never stack teleconverters, doesn’t mean it can’t produce excellent results in some situations.

Canon 7D, 400mm lens with 1.4x and 2x telextenders, tripod. ISO 2000 (yes, 2000!) f16 (due to the telextenders) at 1/125