Sometimes there are dry spells, sometimes months between interesting moments when you do nature photography. After the Salmon spawning season last fall I have been experiencing one of those times. Three months of rain nearly every day then a cold spell made it difficult to get out much in a time of the year when there often isn't much to shoot. Even when there may be something out there you still need a good deal of patience. Since moving to Vancouver Island just around a year and a half ago I have been looking into areas in which I might be able to find different types of owls and other birds of prey. Eagles are very abundant here and there are some very good times of the year to photograph them but other birds of prey are a bit harder to find here than in other areas I have lived. Determining where to find birds can take a long time if you don't have any local knowledge and I'm building that slowly but surely. Barred owls are in the area and I've seen a few but don't currently know of any good spots to reliably find them. Great horned owls are less abundant on the island but can be found. This will take some footwork getting out in the evenings and mostly just listening for them at dusk.
Pygmy owls have been kind of elusive, I have seen a couple but currently do not yet understand their habits to reliably figure out where to find them. Short eared owls, however, are a bit easier to figure out. These owls tend to like to hunt over open fields with good trees to hide in nearby. There are often found in fields that northern harriers also hunt in. I also had some intel on a couple of locations that they had been seen. Short eared owls are a bit more predictable in terms of when they like to hunt, they will hunt anytime during the day but tend to prefer to come out an hour or two before sunset. This is a good thing from a photography perspective as it is the nicest light to catch them as they swoop along the fields and drop down on unsuspecting rodents.
This is where persistence comes to play. Knowing where they have been and when they usually start hunting is a good starting point but like most animals they don't tend to put up a schedule so the best you can do is try to be in the right location at the right time. This year it took me 5 separate trips to 2 different locations to finally get a chance for some shots. For most people spending 20-30 hours standing outside often in the cold and rain for a few minutes of being able to capture some interesting shots of a owl in flight seems silly but for me it was all part of the fun and I will almost certainly spend significantly more time in dry spells hoping to be able to see that interesting moment that I have in my mind or one that I never expected. In fact I have just recently spent a good 8 hour day searching for pygmy owls and came up with nothing and am already planning my next road trip to try again.
For me, the time with those creatures is well worth all the time, walking, cold, and even sometimes the boredom. The photography is the reason that I do it, but even before I did photography I used to spend almost the same amount of time out in nature just watching and trying to understand it a bit more. Hopefully the pictures I have shown today are worth the few minutes of reading this article, they were certainly worth the time I took to get them! See below for a small gallery of pictures from an afternoon shooting 3 short eared owls and their interaction with a north harrier.
