On Memorial day, I got up very early to make a quick trip to the Sax-Zim Bog. It was a gray, misty morning but calm. And the resident birds seemed energized after several days of heavy rain and thunderstorms.

And at 9am I got a wonderful surprise…A Great Gray Owl was hunting voles along McDavitt Road. This probably means that this owl has a nest full of begging beaks somewhere in the vast Black Spruce/Tamarack bog. I was able to get some video and photos as he/she hunted the wet ditch sides. Not very concerned with me, she eventually flew deeper into the bog. I was able to get this photo from the car window by bracing the 400mm lens on the door frame.

I tried to maneuver the car a bit to minimize background clutter and this is the best I could do. I don’t really mind the background branches as much as I thought I would…And I love the lichen-festooned branch the owl is sitting on. Ninety-plus percent of Great Gray photos you see were taken in winter, mainly because that is when they are more visible as they hunt open meadows and roadsides. Summer usually finds them hunting deeper in the bogs. This image has a warmer feel than those.

Also note that my camera was ready to go in the seat next to me when the Great Gray appeared; It was preset to Tv (shutter priority 1/400 second and auto ISO. This way I knew I could shoot handheld and still get a sharp image…And I can live with the noisier image at ISO 1000. If I’d had my camera on aperture priority f5.6, I may have ended up shooting at a slow shutter speed and getting an unsharp and unusable image.

Canon 7D with Canon 400mm f5.6 lens at f5.6 1/400 sec at ISO 1000, handheld but braced on door frame of car.

Elsewhere in the Sax-Zim Bog I had some interesting birds. Though no “wolf whistles” of the Upland Sandpipers were heard, a very surprising Western Meadowlark was singing; Easterns are more common here. In the same field, a lone Sharp-tailed Grouse sat atop a wooden fence post. Nobody told him the party was over three weeks ago! Magpies foraged in hay fields along CR229. Bobolinks had also arrived.
I flushed a group of 6 American Woodcock from a clump of hazel…likely a family group as they nest early and stay together for a while.
In the Black Spruce bogs Connecticut Warblers were found at several locations including a couple males singing on opposite sides of one road. Blue-headed Vireos were at several sites. Winter Wrens and Sedge Wrens were in full song. And Yellow-bellied Flycatchers have returned to their bog breeding forests. Lincoln’s Sparrows sang from the scrubby taiga-like bogs.

I published Duluth naturalist’s David Benson’s Owls of the North a few years ago…Great little book, if you haven’t seen it. Fascinating info on all our northern owls…including the Northern Hawk Owl. Here is an excerpt about Hawk Owl hunting:

Hawk Owls hunt from a convenient perch, searching for prey by sight and then swooping quickly down for the kill. They will chase prey short distances, and sometimes they hunt from perch to perch, dropping down for prey and then swinging up to a nearby perch if they fail to catch their target. Hawk Owls have also been seen hovering over potential prey—unusual behavior for an owl [see photos this post—Sparky]

Alone among owls, Hawk Owls have a falcon-like notch in their bill to sever the spinal cords of their prey. Owl species often use their bills in a similar way, and presumably the notch helps the Hawk Owl to do this with more efficiency.

Congruent with their daytime activity, Hawk Owls rely on sight more than hearing for hunting. Their ears are symmetrical, so they apparently do not need the kind of precision hearing used by most other owls. When scanning for prey, Hawk Owls lean forward almost to the horizontal and pump their tails (a most “un-owly” posture). When they strike, their drop off the perch can look almost like and accidental fall until they begin to glide to the kill.

—from Owls of the North by David Benson (Stone Ridge Press, 2008, ISBN-978-0-9760313-4-5)

We all naturally gravitate to the longest lens in our kit when shooting wildlife. It’s a natural reaction…But it can be a creativity killer. During this amazing session with a family of Northern Hawk Owls in northern Minnesota, I completely forgot about the wide angle lens in my bag. In fact, I was even putting the crappy 2x teleconverter on my 400. But I realized this bird perched in a scraggly Black Spruce would make a great silhouette. I intentionally underexposed to make the bird and trees black and then converted the image to a warmer white balance to increase the orange color, simulating the sunrise. Turns out, I really like this image! It is better than 95% of my telephoto shots from this morning. It shows the perching behavior and, more importantly, the habitat that these day-hunting owls make home.

The lesson? The wide angle lens can be a wonderful wildlife photography tool.

Some days you just get lucky. And today was one of those days. I awoke very early to be up on the Stoney River Forest Road in the Superior National Forest by dawn (Lake County in northern Minnesota). Unfortunately  the day dawned foggy and I struggled to find photo subjects. Driving slowly through a Black Spruce/Tamarack bog I spotted the delicate pink blossom of a blooming Bog Laurel. As I stepped out of the Subaru I heard a familiar sound—the begging call of a young owl. Sure enough, there were THREE juvenile Northern Hawk Owls calling from three different Tamaracks. I doused myself in bug dope (10% DEET!), put on my rubber boots and trudged into the bog. Long story short, I spent two hours watching, waiting and photographing this family. Mom (dad?) would come in every 20 to 40 minutes or so with a big, fat, juicy vole. She would fly in to one juvenile but instantly the other two would race to her to get their share…Talk about sibling rivalry!

This photo is the result of patience and luck. Most of the time the young birds were high up in the tippy tops of Tamaracks…with a gray sky background. Patience rewarded me with this bird only six feet off the ground. Luck had it that at some point mom/dad must have given a signal for the chicks that danger was near (and it wasn’t me because the adult ignored me). For at least 10 minutes all three youngsters froze…No begging, no looking around, no moving at all. I used this to get within 10 yards. Note that this guy has a precious vole clutched tightly in its talons…probably a gift from mom or dad.

I chose a vertical orientation to include the photogenic perch.

Canon 7D, 400mm f5.6 on tripod with Wimberly Sidekick, f5.6 at 1/250 at ISO 200.

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

If you’re a photographer you know how you can ignore personal discomfort when a fantastic photo opportunity presents itself. Oppressive heat, swarming mosquitos, sand in the face, laying on rocks, intense cold all become background when shooting something cool. I was returning from South Dakota’s Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge through southeast North Dakota when I spotted something in the ditch. I pulled a U-turn and found this mellow Short-eared Owl. For me it was a very exciting find…I’ve only seen them from distance while floating over prairies in western Minnesota.

Since the owl was staring at me but not budging, I decided I could crawl closer. My feet were now soaked as there was water beneath the snow in the ditch. But I kept creeping closer.  I got close enough so I could fill the frame with the owl. Deciding not to further disturb the owl, I backed off. After getting back to the car I realized my feet were icy cold. The lesson: Always have an extra pair of dry socks in your camera bag!

Sometime around noon on this lazy Saturday, I received a message from birder extraordinaire, Jim Lind, that a Boreal Owl was hunting around his uncle’s yard northwest of Two Harbors. Now a Boreal Owl is a very rare bird, but I’ve seen many (including one just two days earlier), but for Bridget it would be a lifer. So we bundled up little Birk Anders (it was time for his nap anyway) and headed north.

It was a gorgeous day for a drive anyway…40 degrees and sunny. About an hour later (after a long debate about which fast food place to drive-thru) we arrived at the rural home only to find that it had flown into the woods and they had not seen it for a while. I decided to tromp through the pine woods to see if I could find the little guy. The snow was deep!…Up to my knees and powdery so simply walking was a workout. The term “needle in a haystack” kept creeping into my mind. I was listening for the scolding of chickadees…They often mob small owls. Sometimes its tough to determine if they are scolding you or an owl. Then I heard an extremely agitated Red-breasted Nuthatch. But I only glanced at the spruce since the feisty little nuthatches are easily perturbed. After slogging through the deep snow for ten more minutes, I gave the large spruce another look…And there he (she? It?) was…tucked against the trunk just waiting for another vole to make a fatal mistake and show itself. I hurried back to the car and got Bridget. She couldn’t have asked for a better look. Neat bird. I crept within 20 feet and he never even glanced at me…Typical of these “tame” birds. I shot several dozen images with both the 400mm f5.6 and flash (mounted on the hotshoe…a bad habit that gives the birds redeye or ‘steel eye’ but which, I feel I can fix in Photoshop) and the 200mm to give more of a “bird in the habitat” look. Minutes later, Tony and Tom Hertzel showed up as did Peder Swingen (whom I’ve seen at the last three Boreal Owl sightings in less than a week).

A wonderful afternoon…And little Birk Anders slept through the whole thing!

Canon XTi, handheld, f5.6 at 1/400, ISO 400

Close up with Canon 400mm f5.6, bird-in-the-landscape shot with Canon 70-200mm f4

I had the privilege of spending time with a very responsible Great Gray Owl today. On a little used dirt road in southeast Itasca County I stumbled on a hunting Great Gray right next to the road. If I was a northern owl in search of suitable habitat that reminded me of my ancestral Canadian home (any assumption that this owl had its genetic roots north of the border is purely speculation on my part), then this would be a bog for me. Monospecific stands of Black Spruce rooted in deep sphagnum moss bordered both sides of the road. We (the owl and I) could have been in northern Canada for all we knew.

I parked well up the road and hoofed it back towards him with camera and tripod and flash. It was a quiet and heavy day; fog and thick mist in the air. As is typical of northern owls, the Great Gray hardly acknowledged me. I started shooting. He ignored me; Eyes wide open searching the moss with his ears. After a few false alarms he settled back and seemed to relax. His eyes drooped more and more until they shut. Instantly his eyes snapped open and he seemed to pull himself erect…It was a perfect imitation of a sleepy man in church during a long boring sermon. I could read his mind, “I’ve got three hungry mouths to feed back at the nest…I have to stay awake and capture dinner…No relaxing…The little lady will be upset….Why else would I be hunting at midday?” This scenario repeated itself several times before he flew back into the bog. Unable to fly, I fairly skipped back to the truck with dozens of fun photos of a responsible owl father, a rarely seen denizen of the North.

Canon XTi, Canon 400mm lens with 1.4x teleconverter, tripod, f6.3 at 1/250, ISO 400