Snowy Owls Galore! Actually saw 25 Snowy Owls in about 8 hours. More about that trip and my experience later. All I can tell you is BIRDERS are some very unique individuals. They have a much different objective from a Wildlife Photographer. I am certain they are Nascar Fans as well! But more on that another day. So Sunday Jan 11th 2015 - I went on a day trip to the Upper Penninsula of Michigan (Primarily Chippewa County) to look for Snowy owls and other Owls. While I/we were super successful on the Snowy Owl part of the OBJECTIVE, I however did not see any other species of Owl. This is one of the mature Snowy Owls we saw and is possibly a Female. It seems the identification of Snowy Owls and what people use to determine their gender, well is not so true. There is a major study of them that has been going for a little over 1 year now. Birds being banded and studied along with Location Tracking devices. Ornithologists and Biologists are finding is that the ONLY way to verify their gender is to physically examine the bird. Outward characteristics just are not reliable enough to make any determination. This Snowy was perched in a tree! Yay - because most of the time you see them on a fence post or more likely a telephone pole. Which is great for them for visibility. However not so good for photography. I mean WHO wants a telephone pole as a dominant part of a photograph - especially a Wildlife Photo. What we do know is that Snowy owls travel thousands of miles from the arctic regions of North America in some winters. What we dont know is the reasons for certainty. Some think it is a lack of resources (food source - primarily lemmings), other years because there is a BOOM of fledglings and they get pushed out by mature owls. Captured with a Nikon D800e and my Nikon 600mm F4 VRII Exposure was: F/4 at 1/1600 sec using ISO 100. --Martin
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 19:31:25 +0000
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