Long Eared Owl successfully hunts a tasty vole

You guys don’t seem to love the Long Eared Owls as much as I do, but one day I’ll win you over! Until then, as long as I see great LEOs, I’m gonna share them!

I’ll leave out the last few shots of this series, but they’re available on the original post from Kevin Thurk Photography.

There’s also video of the owl targeting and taking flight and eating his tasty morsel if you prefer video.

I edited the post below a bit for spelling and grammar to make it a bit easier to read. He must key his pictures do most of the talking! 😉 I tease!

So, I recently had a pretty extraordinary experience with a Long-eared Owl.

The temperature was around -5F and had been sitting enjoying my time with one as it slept for a few hours. I had my Z9 with a 600mm lens on my tripod so could take some video clips and had my D850 with my 150-600mm Tamron lens for some shorter distance/handheld shots.

Slowly, the owl started to wake up and look around. I could see its head tilting back and forth, and I knew exactly what was about to ensue.

The owl jumped down to a lower branch and gave me a clear view from a few different angles. I was able to reposition my large lens on the tripod and I turned on video mode.

I then snuck over under a tree and laid on the ground as the owl faced me with a clear view. The owl continued to tilt its head back and forth and knew it was in hunting mode.

It kept looking at the ground right between me and it. The owl eventually flew down roughly 15ft in front of me, grabbed a vole from under the snow, made the kill, and flew back to another tree to consume it.

I was able to re-adjust and get clear views as the Long-Eared Owl consumed the vole. This was definitely an extraordinary experience, and I will remember it for years to come.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9d32e49f-a37e-465d-8af4-ff00e7e3d16d.webp