A leisurely neighborhood walk with The Dog the other day. We rounded a corner near the top of the bluff to take the trail we always take that winds down to the sea. Then suddenly, what’s this? We heard a number of crows – not enough to make a murder, though maybe an attempted murder – going off in the trees. This was more than a lover’s quarrel, for sure, these crows were pissed off. We stepped beneath the branches to get a closer look, saw a few of the crows, but we couldn’t see what had gotten their dander up. Turns out there must’ve been five or six of them, all pointed and cawing at the same object. But what? So we continued on, toward the trailhead, to get a better look from a different perspective. Ah ha! there she was, perched, undaunted by all the racket, and appearing calmly supercilious. I figured it was a girl because the girls are bigger than the boys, about 1.5-2X bigger. I had my camera with me, with the Tamron 28-200 lens attached. A “budget” lens, as experts refer to it, but when a patient Great Horned Owl is your subject, pretty good glass, I must say. And in less than ideal light at that. Followed by a little post-processing on the computer, and voila! Click (or tap) to embiggen, maybe you’ll agree.
And then I waited. How long would it be before she tired of my presence, and the crows, who hadn’t stopped their cawing the whole time I was there. Not long it turned out. Happy with my captures, I started my retreat from the forest floor back to the trail to rejoin HW and The Dog, when, after a few anxious head bobs, she suddenly lifted off her perch. I hadn’t switched off the camera, in fact it was still on and in auto-focus mode, and set to a suitably fast shutter speed (1/800). I pointed, pressed and held the AF button, then pressed the shutter. It all happened in 2-3 seconds.
Bam!
Just magnificent predators.
Minutes later, we were about halfway down the trail when when way off in the distance I spotted her silhouette, she was perched on a branch in a different tree, backlit by sunlight filtering through leaves, already drawing the attention of a new murder of crows. And, from what I could tell at that distance, still appearing unbothered by them.