Guys, if you have spent any time at all on my blog, you know that I do cute. It didn’t really occur to me until yesterday, that my wildlife photos are mainly of sweet, sweet herbivores. Heh. You know, bees, hummingbirds, gophers (see above), and pets… yes, I am aware that my dogs are carnivores, but those are pellets that I don’t have to think about. When they get people food, it’s produce (carrots, apples, bananas, etc.). Meat hasn’t been in my kitchen since 1998, so raw animal it isn’t really on my radar.

So needless to say, yesterday was a bit horrific as I realized that those cute little fuzzy puffballs are eating raw animal. I know, I know… I did know it, but I didn’t think about it. When you watch wildlife shows, you don’t see the carnage, at least I don’t watch shows like that. So guess what, most of my footage from yesterday is being left on the cutting room floor (deleted). Ze Frank is correct, owls are “beards of prey” (True Facts: Owl).

I was able to find a few nuggets of cuteness, and that’s what I’m gonna post.

The last few days, I’ve been disappointed that I was mainly getting Mama Owl’s back, but after yesterday, I’m fine with that now. I think I will get my camera set up just a few minutes earlier, before feeding time, in the future. Great light is one thing, horrific imagery is another, heh.

On with the cuteness, well except for that FU face, Mama Owl is giving…

Cute little fuzzy puffballs…

This is what I’m here for…

Mama Owl was giving all the dirty looks yesterday, and this video shows some of her best mean looks, she is not amused…

So there’s another photographer that stands out there taking photos too, and yesterday after the eye-opening experience and we were putting away our gear, I called out, “well, I’m not hungry anymore”. To which he replied, “yeah, I’m just hoping I got some good family portraits.” I said something like, “yeah, without food hanging out of her mouth.” And he agreed. We both went our separate ways, wondering just how graphic our photos were going to be.

I’m going to have to take some ‘behind the scenes’ photos of my camera, because it’s a whole different experience watching the owls thru a tiny LCD monitor, and then going home and seeing it at 1080p on a big monitor. So. much. different.

Anyway, this is the best ‘family portrait’, I could find, and no the owlets don’t have “Kool-aid lip”, um that’s blood… apologies in advance…

So lessons learned, meal time is private time… also, perhaps showing up just 30 minutes earlier I’ll get the stretching and cuteness time. We’ll see, but I won’t be pushing the shutter button during mealtime anytime soon.

Until next time…

~nic

_{note to self: 2023-03-04-2756, 2794, 2876, 2762, 2768}