Owls on the ground ....

One night I walked outside looking up in the trees for the owls.  I could not locate any of them!  Right when I was about to walk inside.... I felt like something was staring at me.  I KNEW the owls were here .. somewhere! 

My youngest daughter pointed to the ground and said "the owls are on the ground!!" Can you spy the two owls in this picture??

This little guy (or gal) just cracks me up!!

Someone is giving ME the stinkeye!

Three owls in a tree...

This is hands down, my most FAVORITE picture so far!!

Can you believe my LUCK that I got three of them at the same time?!!  I only managed to snap two pictures and one of the pictures was blurry, and then one flew to a different part of the tree.

Is is slightly an eery feeling to see owls watching you -- every move I made, they followed me.  I called this picture "Three screech owls... sitting in a tree ... S-T-A-R-I-N-G!... at me!"

Two beauties sitting in a tree...

These two beauties .... aren't they gorgeous?

These two pictures are the same, I just lightened it up a bit so you could see the detail better. :)

Can you see them?

Can you see them?

They are so small (OK, maybe they're not 10 inches tall .... but perhaps 6 inches?)

Seeing doubles...

These two adorable screech owls were just ... adorable!  By this point, I was so excited to capture two of them on the same limb of tree at the same time!

These two ... not as young looking ... owls appear to be sleeping.  I probably just captured them while they were blinking at the same time!

Here are the babies up close again!

A wise owl...

Since I am still learning about photography, I enjoyed playing around with the rules of thirds in this picture.  This owl looks so wise.  It reminds me of the poem by Edward Hersey Richards about the Wise Old Owl:

A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard.
Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?

Too much caffeine?

This little guy (or girl?) on the left freaked me out.... a friend of mine said he was probably the one freaked out to see me!  She also said he must have had too much Mountain Dew!  This is the first time I was able to capture two owls on the same limb at the same time!

Such a poser!

This screech owl was posed perfectly for me.

Before I was brave...

Before I was brave to move close enough to the owls, I stayed close to the back door.  Would they chase me if I got too close?  Would they stay where they were?  I used my zoom lens, and with a very shaky hand took a few (ok... pretty bad) pictures.  So, they are still far away and very blurry. 

I have only seen one other owl in the wild, and that was a year or two ago in the trails behind our home.  These are screech owls, and are not very big.  Maybe about 10 inches tall?  We have the same beauties visit us every night.  :)

How it started...

A few weeks ago I came home and my husband took me to the back door and said "we had about 4 or 5 owls in our backyard tonight!"  He tried to find them for me, and found one.  It was the very first picture that I took (in the previous post that is pitch black... I used my flash and scared the owl away).  Since then, we have realized that these owls have been arriving in our trees at about 5'ish and stay until it's dark.  I have loved capturing these beautiful owls.  Enjoy the pictures!

The picture that started it all...