Short eared owl banking a turn while hunting. So cool to watch the head stay perfectly stable as the body turns through the corner.
I have been observing owls and photographing them for nearly 20 years in North America. There are now only a few of the more common species that I haven’t been able to get to know and don’t have good photographs of. Short Eared Owls are not a particularly rare owl, but up until this year I have had little success in getting to know them. A couple of trips to Amherst Island years ago gave me some quick glimpses of them as they took off before I could raise a camera. Near the end of this winter I got a call from another nature photographer with some local knowledge of a great location to be able to shoot Short Eared Owls…not owl…owls.
This area has been locally referred to as Shortyville, and the locals know where to go and when to be there. They stick around this farming area for a few weeks before dispersing to their summer haunts and during that time they will hunt just before dusk over the farmer’s fields in some of the nicest light.
Searching the ground, eyes on a target.
On our first trip down there we got to the location at around 2pm. Thinking we were early, I was surprised to see a good number of cars with people standing around with tripods on the edge of the road. Seems this was the hot spot from the day before. Nothing was around at the time, it was still a bit early even though the sun was not going to be high in the sky for long.
Short eared owl on the hunt over the farmers field.
We decided to drive around a bit as the owls were known to hunt in a number of the fields in the area. We got pretty lucky, seeing first a northern harrier and then in the same field a short eared owl, both searching over the field. Within a few minutes there were two more owls and we started to have our choice of what to try to shoot. By the time we had seen the owls, the clouds had come in and the light was not the beautiful golden hour that seemed to be promised an hour earlier. We did make the best of it, with the owl circling the field for about 45 minutes before heading off to a field that we couldn’t get close to.
Beautiful short eared owl in flight. I had no idea that the underside of the wings were so white.
For this trip I was using the Sony A7RIV and the 200-600 G lens with the 1.4 teleconverter. To say that this combination was not the optimal set up is an understatement. A slow (f/6.3) lens with a teleconverter for f/9 aperture was a challenge…would have loved to have had a 600 f4 instead. The teleconverter was necessary due to the distance these birds were from the road. The Sony A7RIVs high megapixel sensor would not normally be considered the best choice in a low light situation but again the cropping capability was pretty important for this shoot due to the distance from the subject. I have to admit, with all that I have said above I was really impressed with what I was able to get with that combination.
I really had no idea how light the underside of a short eared owls wings were....such a contrast to the top side.
First, the autofocus is amazing. I had never, before the Sony A7III had a camera that could track focus with all focus points at f/9 with such speed. The A7RIV is actually better, not as good I’ve heard as the A9 series but better by far than I had expected. It was able to attain and keep focus even after I could barely see the subject. The other thing that amazed me was the view finder. My A7III has a very low resolution view finder and can be seen as “just usable” but the view finder on the A7RIV is brilliant, really a pleasure to use.
I love the difference in the colours on the back of the wing to the lighter shades underneath.
All that being said, if the pictures aren’t good was any of it worth it? From my perspective, shooting at ISO3200 I was very happy with the results. Yes, at the pixel level the noise was higher than the A7III but there wasn’t that much difference if I downsized the shot to match the A7III pixel count. Not quite as good but pretty close and I really needed those extra pixels that day.
As this short eared owl locked in on a target those wings and tail feathers spread until it was nearly a hover.
One nice thing about short eared owls is that they are not too difficult to keep your lens on. This was a good thing as I was learning the capabilities of the camera and lens combo. Trying to keep a bird in the shot at 840mm when you can predict its flight path is still hard enough when you aren’t used to the length or weight of the lens. Since I shoot mostly hand held, getting to know the camera like it is an extension of my arm is pretty important.
Those beautiful big eyes are busy. Short eared owl on the hunt.
The shots ranged from cloudy background to a background of tree branches at the edge of the field. The fields were partially snow covered. This combination meant that exposure was going to be pretty unpredictable, so I used aperture mode to keep the depth of field I needed to get most of the bird in focus and adjusted the iso up to keep the shutter speed around 1/1000s as much as possible.
Short eared owl hunting over a field in shortyville beke behind a barn.
The highlight was watching the owls hunt. Circling the field over and over, hovering almost like a kestrel over any noise they heard on the ground. These owls are absolutely beautiful to watch with an almost white belly and amazing coloration on the back and wings.
Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier) competing with a short eared owl for food.
I had two more chances to get out to see these owls in February and March, the second time was mostly a bust but the third trip gave some great views and a good chance for Salwa to see the owls with me.
Short eared owl sweeping across the field, looking for anything that moves or makes a sound.
This was a great winter for owls, Great Horned, Barred, Snowy, Long Eared, Eastern Screech followed by the Northern Hawk Owl, and Short Eared and finally a Saw-whet. I still have a few in North America that I want to shoot. I have yet to see a Boreal Owl, or get shots in the wild of a Barn owl or Burrowing owl. Once I get back out west there will be a chance to get a few new ones there as well. Then I have the rest of the world to try to find them all. Hopefully I can do it in the next 20 years or so.