Great Horned Owls

Dale Matson

Click On Photographs To Enlarge

Adult Great Horned Owl (First Trip Photo)

Sharon and I had the good fortune of discovering a Great Horned Owl nest on our drive home from hiking to an area that had a Bald Eagle Nest by Eastman Lake. Does this happen to you also from time to time? You get a bonus photo opportunity on your way to another destination or on the way home. Well, a bird in the hand…so to speak.

Sharon spotted the Nest with two fluffy white heads and big eyes peering at us from a partially concealed nest along the road. She convinced me to turn around and she got a photo of one chick still visible above the nest. We used a pull out near the deciduous Oak Tree that contained the nest.

From our truck, we could also make out an adult above and to the left of the nest. Since we had already taken photos on our eagle hike, we each had cameras to take more photos. The chicks hunkered down in the nest at this point and the Adult remained above the nest.

We made a mental note where the nest was along the highway and made a special trip two days later to try and get more photos hoping to see the chicks again. This time, the chicks remained above the nest. We got out and walked around including climbing a hill on the far side of the road but there were a lot of intervening branches on the tree no matter where we stood.

I had never seen a Great Horned Owl in the wild before and the chicks had even become more brownish in the two days since we had last seen them. The adult had feathers that made a perfect camouflage when perched in a tree. Although the adult owl looked huge in the tree, adult Great Horned Owls are only about half the weight of an eagle.

This trip, the adult flew from the nest and perched on a tree further away from us on two separate occasions. We took the hint and decided to call it a day, not wanting to stress the birds.

I think in a matter of a couple of weeks, the bird nest and chicks will be invisible from the road because the oak tree is continuing to leaf out and fill in the open spaces in the crown of the tree.

I have often heard the evening sounds of owls as I photographed eagles but was never been able to echolocate the birds. This was a particularly serendipitous and joyful experience especially because it was shared.

For those who are interested, these photographs were taken on the two occasions with my Sony A7R3 and 100-400mm GM lens with a 1.4X TC (560mm). Focusing was problematic because there were so many branches, leaves and twigs in front of the birds. I wound up using mostly manual focus, which allowed me to focus on the birds and avoid front focusing because of the interference. I also used “flexible spot” as my focus zone which seemed to work for keeping both the chicks and adult in focus. Those settings were not optimal for the bird in flight photos since I didn’t have time to change my settings.

 Almost Invisible (lower 3rd near center)

Sharon's Two Photos Taken The First Trip - Chicks Are Whiter

 Hunkered Down And Barely Visible

Happy Easter!

Nine Days later I have 2 More Photos

 If You Look Carefully You Will See An Adult And 3 Young Owls

I believe there is a serious ant problem for this young owl. The ants are overwhelming the owl and it looks like his vision is possibly impaired. I contacted the wildlife folks in Madera County and asked them to help this young owl out. It is not ready to fly and can't get away from the ants.