Two nests of the Great Horned Owl

Growing up in my home town we lived on the outskirts of the city on a small farm. We had all kinds of pets growing up that were not the tipical "farm" animal. One such critter was a Great Horned Owl named Hooter (this was long,long before the resturant was ever out.) We had him for a few years and it was a blast to watch him learn to fly. Anyway thats when I picked up the love of Owls. I've been watching a pair of Great Horned Owls for about a year now, those of you that have been following my Blog will have seen a post or two on them, Well they start nesting in late February to early March. It took me a while but I found their nest. It was the best hidden nest I have ever seen. Most people would never see it even if they walked right under it. Now when photographing nesting birds you have to be very careful, you don't want to disturb them in any way. They get bothered and leave the nest and the eggs/babies could die. Now this pair is used to Humans being in close contact, but its still a good idea to give them their space. I'm using a 600mm lens on a cropped sensor camera that gives me a total of 960mm so I don't need to be that close. So here are the Photos of their nest. I'll post the second Great Horned Owls nest after this one. The male was five trees down and as I was photographing hiim he started calling his mate and she would respond. Now if I was bothering them they would of been quite, but as I said they are use to Humans and didn't take me as a threat.

Now this second nest Of owls is new to me. I found it sort of by word of mouth. A gentalman I met while hiking a trail said he had seen an Owl fly into a stand of trees, Well its nesting season so I thought I would try to track it down. It wasn't hard to find, in fact you can spot it from the main road as you drive by. Now this set of Owls are not use to Humans like the other set is, so I need to be careful not to disturb them and that means staying even further away. Still with my camera setup its not a real issue, None of these photos are edited in any way so they're not cropped in at all.

I'm waiting on the Burrowing Owls to return so I can get some new photos of them and maybe get some of the young while they are young. I wont be getting any of them nesting as they nest in the ground and that would make it impossible to do without disturbing them. Photographers that do that do get some awesome photos, but should have their camera gear taken from them and never allow them to photograph again. What good is a photo if it cost the subject or its offspring their lives. Just saying. On a happier note my next trip is aproching fast and I'm really looking forword to seeing "Green" again. Southren Oregon is a beautiful area and I could use the change after being in the High dessert of central Washington all winter.