Pair of burrowing owls; Salton Sea
Burrowing owls are small, cute and slightly comical birds, that I had long hoped to photograph. The area around the Salton Sea is one of the most reliable places to find them, where they occupy convenient nesting sites burrowed into the soft soil embankments of irrigation troughs bordering agricultural fields. The owls generally use existing holes dug by small mammals, but are happy also to use artificial burrows constructed by local farmers by embedding lengths of irrigation pipe into the ground. Unlike most owls, burrowing owls are active during daytime. Although primarily hunting around dawn and sunset, they can often be seen posing around their burrows throughout the day. We were thus disappointed on our first visit last year to see exactly zero owls, despite scanning the embankments for many hours. However, we had good success on a recent return visit, aided by advice from a birder friend (thanks, Eric), and favored by much better weather.
To photograph the owls without spooking them we used our SUV as a mobile blind, driving slowly along the dirt roads with the passenger side facing the embankments of the irrigation channels so I could photograph through the open car window. We spotted several owls, sometimes with just their heads poking above the top of a burrow, and sometimes in the open beside their burrow or on top of the embankment. They seemed oblivious to the vehicle, so we could get quite close, obviating any need for an exceptionally long telephoto lens. After spotting owls at a distance we would inch forward, stopping when it looked like I would have a good angle, and turn off the engine to kill vibrations that might blur the photo.
This month’s image features a pair of owls we found perched in full view beside their burrow. Unfortunately, however, we had stopped at a position where one owl partially blocked a view of the other and, constrained by the car window, I could not find an angle that gave enough clearance. Having earlier scared off an owl by starting the engine we did not want to move the car forward (a Tesla would have an advantage here…), so it was a matter of waiting to see if the birds would reposition themselves.
Wildlife photography is as much a matter of patience as skill, and after many minutes the owl in front did move enough to give a clear view of the head of its partner. That made a nice composition, but then I needed both birds to be looking at me, at the same time, with their eyes fully open. More waiting - which gave me time to come up with a solution to a technical problem. The spacing between the two owls was such that only one would be in sharp focus, and I didn’t want to use an aperture smaller than f8 to get a greater depth of field for fear of needing a shutter speed that might blur any motion. My solution was to focus bracket; taking two shots in fast succession, each focused on a different owl. I initially focused on the eye of the rear owl, locked that focus by holding the shutter button half-pressed, and recomposed so the focus box in the viewfinder was now on the eye of the front owl. Then, more waiting, while trying to keep the camera steady and shutter half-pressed until all four eyes were open and looking at me. As soon as that happened I full-pressed the shutter to capture a shot with the rear bird in focus; then briefly released and immediately full-pressed the shutter again to get a second shot with the foremost owl now in focus.