Figure 1 – Great Horned Owl, male, Audubon Habitat Wildlife Refuge, Belmont, MA, January, 15, 2021. (c) DE Wolf 2021.
Since some point in July we have been looking for a well-known pair of great horned owls (Bubo virginianus) at Audubon Society’s Habitat Wildlife Refuge in Belmont, MA. There has been not a hoot and we feared that they had been frightened away by nearby construction – bang, bang, bang instead of hoot, hoot, hoot. The last couple of weeks they have been freshly sighted in their preferred grove, vey high up in a pine tree. On Sunday I was rewarded and big lens clumsily in hand as I tried to hold everything steady I obtained the image of Figure 1.
Owls are variously associated with knowledge, darkness, and the underworld. Most profoundly they symbolize illumination and guide us from the darkness. Seems hopeful and perhaps appropriate to the day.
Canon T2i with EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS ISM lens at 300 mm, ISO 3200, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/320 sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.
Dear David,
thank you for your blogs, I enjoy them always. Our neighbor had an owl’s nest in a pine tree,
broken in half since and removed, and the two chicks when they left the nest, they were roosting
in our yard high up in a Norway spruce for a week and fed by the parents. The last few years they are nesting somewhere in the neighborhood, but we have not spotted the nest yet. But we can hear them.
That should start any time now, right?
It is good to hear from you. Jan and I are well, enjoying life.