I Couldn’t Give A Hoot

Brown Wood Owl, originally uploaded by http://andrewskelton.net.

More owl photos from the weekend, and one I’m particularly pleased with. I’ve taken photos of these Brown Wood Owls (go on, guess how THEY got their name… yes, they’re brown… they live in woods.. and they’re owls.. you’re getting pretty good at this naming game aren’t you. I’ll have to devise something a bit trickier for you next time) before, but they’re usually perching up high in a dark part of their enclosure and as such the photos have not been great. It’s not surprising really ,that they favour the shaded areas as these Owls are nocturnal and I’m sure would prefer to be sleeping all day rather than being gawped at. Imagine my surprise when I witnessed one of the birds flying around the cage, and then land on a lowish stump that was clearly visible from the front of it’s enclosure. It had taken some food that had been put out for it and was unconcerned by the proximity of people to it. It did, however, seem fascinated my my large lens (as were many of the visitors to the Park) and it seemed to follow me as I moved into different locations – though it did continue to eat which implies that it didn’t feel threatened in any way.

As you can see from the uploads to Flickr (and of course today’s image on this blog) I couldn’t have asked for better lighting – though you could be forgiven for thinking I’d added the catch light in the birds eyes as it seems too perfect!

Interestingly, well I thought it was, the bird has an inner eyelid that is semi-opaque which it can close independently from it’s eyelid. It can even close either the inner or outer lid independently of the other eye which all looks a bit unnerving when you’re trying to photograph the animal and it’s start winking at you!

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