Burrowing Owl Gallery

Burrowing Owl

All of these pictures are of a burrowing owl that used to winter near Baskett Slough NWR near Salem, Oregon. The local birders had dubbed it "Big Face".

Big Face

Big Face is one of my favorites of all the animals I’ve had the pleasure to see. It hung out in the culverts beside a road near the Slough and was fairly tolerant as long as you stayed in your car, so you could get fantastic views just with your naked eyes. One thing these pictures don’t convey is how small of a bird a burrowing owl really is. My previous frame of reference for owls had been the massive great horned owl, so I was stunned to see how small these owls are. Every time I saw it I was surprised again, it always seemed larger in my memory.

I last saw it a few years ago, I’m not sure if it went somewhere else or if it has since returned, but I hope its doing well wherever it is. Most of the light was already gone when this picture was taken, but the part of the owl shown here was lit up in the golden rays of the dying sun.

Beautiful, beautiful bird.

Close-up of burrowing owl's face in the rain at Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge

Goodbye Sunshine, Hello Rain

Taken in a similar spot to the picture above but on a different day, a day in which the sunshine of that picture was traded for a drizzling rain, a staple of winters in the Northwest. You can see beads of water on the top of his head and along his face. My head stayed warm and dry, as I was photographing him from my car to avoid disturbing him.

Although his stare seems quite intense, he was as nonplussed by the rain as he was by me. I had taken a number of pictures of him but wanted one where he was looking right at me with his bright yellow eyes. However, since he didn’t consider me a threat, he rarely looked up. He finally cooperated for a brief moment before looking away again.

I wish I had stopped down just a bit to get more depth of field and keep the fine feathers of his face in focus, but I was trying to keep the background fairly blurred to separate it from the owl’s face. In the end, it’s the eyes that make the picture for me.