From Richard Gotz
I left my tripod unattended for 2 minutes when this guy came along and commandeered it.
Thank you Tammy for sending this image to me.
From Richard Gotz
While standing on the road with many other photographers, I had the good fortune to have this GGO land right in front of me. Without moving, I switched my settings to 1/160s f/8 iso 280 and let the 800mm do the rest.
Very unique post for you today. It’s 3 separate posts in 1.
A group of photographers were out shooting owls when Richard Gotz had a Great Gray land on his tripod. That moment was captured, but also another photographer captured his surprise, and he was also able to get a photo himself with his high magnification lens. We’re left with multiple perspectives of what must have been a very magical moment of time for those present!
“Manfrotto? It’s OWLfrotto now!”
Now that you’ve got me thinking about it, I’m a little surprised there aren’t more camera related jokes in a place like this… 😄
That’s awesome. I love his expression. The photographer’s. :D
It’s not too often a human gets to be sharing the spotlight here. Before I saw who it was and found the other photos I wasn’t going to share the first photo because I was worried it was staged or someone baiting wild owls, but after seeing comments from Ryan Humphrey in the linked thread, who we’ve featured a ton of stuff by here, and finding the other photos, I saw it was just an unexpected encounter. I’m surprised the owl would come hang out with multiple people plainly visible.
I love the first picture because it looks like the owl has flaps and spoilers. I didn’t realize their feathers can ruffle up like that.
Great point. I wouldn’t be surprised if they made them function at least somewhat to that effect.
I was just discussing tonight with my girlfriend who’s an X-ray tech as I was looking at an X-ray of a Long Ear with a broken wing about how I’m always amazed so much of an owl is just feathers with such little actual owl holding it all together.
Like, I just feel a wing needs to be more fleshy to work. It doesn’t look like that but of muscle to that amount of wing wind be able to do anything.
But it is really neat to get to see all that structure from a different angle we didn’t normally see in that picture. It’s stuff like that which keeps me still amazed after looking at so many of these pics. I don’t know how many I look at for every one I share here, maybe 8-10 to 1, and the amount of things I feel I still haven’t seen blows me away.
It does look awfully delicate for all that it does. Hollow bones, tiny muscles. A lot of performance. And how much control do they have over individual wing feathers? (Not asking for an answer, just thinking out loud.) It’s fascinating.
I’m not sure how much it is individual feathers. I’m picturing clusters of various sizes, like a plumicorns section, maybe some facial disc sections. With the contour feathers that give them their overall shape, you can really see the end result when they either fluff or tighten in defensive postures, or just when they’re trapping warm air when it’s cold.
It’s something I’m always keeping an eye out for more data on. Even if it’s pretty basic, it’s still a cool trait, and if it’s more extreme, there’s got to be done near reasons for it.
