Snowy Owl in a Rut

We arrived at Assateague Island at about 8:30 in the morning and had found one of the resident Snowy Owls by 8:45. No sooner did I get out of the Jeep and start to setup my tripod did the little critter fly off and sit in a rut—directly in the path of vehicles that drive down the beach. I sat on the edge of a dune and watched the little owl for a minute when a couple of hunters came driving up the beach. They stopped a couple of yards in front of little Snowy-the -Owl, then drove around the guy. The owl didn't even flinch. I quietly walked within 50 yards of the little guy and he spooked, but a pickup truck can drive within 10 yards and he is motionless. So, we went back to the Jeep and drove up to sit 15 yards away and took several portraits of the little Owl. He seemed to like the camouflage and shelter provided by the eight-inch deep ruts left by trucks. I hope he pays attention to traffic.

In all the places that we sat and watched the owl, when he finally chose to fly, he always flew away from us, not towards us. What, do we smell bad—we are human, maybe we do. At several points we sat and watched the owl stay in one spot for over an hour. This little flight is the best one I got. There were others, but they were always a variation on some theme of owl butt.

In my last entry about the Snowy Owl at Assateague, I joked about snapping pictures of the owl coughing-up a pellet. Well, he actually did cough-up a pellet for us. It was gross and kind of funny—you know that look cats get before they puke, well add wings and that just about describes it. I won't punish Trailpixie.net readers with the animated GIF of the event, nor will I subject them to the macro photograph of the turd-like amalgam of fur, bones, and a discernible rodent tail, ick!

As always, I had to take some panoramic images. This one gives you a sense of the Snowy Owl's size and appearance in the habitat. Actually, I think finding a Snowy Owl at Assateague is probably a lot easier than finding them in the snowy north-country because his white feathers contrast against the tan sand.

The full sized print of this scene is 18" x 50". I like environmental portraits like this one. Last year I did another one of a Barred Owl in Northern Virginia. Unfortunately, online they don't show too well, because the little critter in the image seems kind of small, but up on my wall they are much larger and easier to see. (You can always click on my images to see them larger.) You may be curious about why the owl in this panoramic appears so much smaller than the one in the 'panoramics' from last December. Well, those weren't panoramic images; they were panoramic crops of a single frame. In print, the owl will be the same size, but online the recent image looks smaller because I chose to show a wider view comprised of about eight images.

* I apologize for the careless use of the masculine pronoun when referring to the owl. Unfortunately, the owl hasn't allowed me to verify its gender.