This young burrowing owl chick has been practicing his hunting skills by flying a short distance away from the nest to capture “preys” of his imagination, e.g. a loose feather, a small rock, etc. In this photo he was flying back to the nest with his captured “prey”, which happened to be a small piece of clay in this case.
We arrived on location before sunrise and quietly, gently stayed a safe distance from this burrowing owl family’s artificial plastic burrow. In the first few minutes the parent owls kept occasional glances toward our direction while the chicks were openly curious and stared at us with their huge, round eyes. However, they were pretty soon convinced that we were not a threat and thus went on with their daily routines. With more than a handful of chicks in the family, daddy owl worked quite hard to feed all of his hungry babies. He repeatedly flew to the nearby fields to catch crickets then hurriedly flew back to the nest and fed them to the waiting chicks. This photograph captured one such caring moment between a parent and child.
A Burrowing Owlet (Athene cunicularia) checks me and my camera out. This little guy kept popping in and out of burrow like a sock puppet!
I have been photographing this family of Burrowing Owls for a couple of years, so the parents are very tolerant of my presence. They go about their daily routines — hunting, feeding and grooming the chicks — totally oblivious of my presence. On this day, the sun had just peaked above a distant mountain and bathed the owls in glorious warm red glow. The rising sun in the chick’s eyes promised a new dawn and a new life for the family.