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Burrowing Owl (18)
alejandroguzman
![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Note Writer [C: 92 W: 0 N: 92]](http://i1.treknature.com/misc/g-n-g.gif) (452) | Description: A small ground-dwelling Owl with a round head and no ear tufts. They have white eyebrows, yellow eyes, and long legs. The Owl is sandy coloured on the head, back, and upperparts of the wings and white-to-cream with barring on the breast and belly and a prominent white chin stripe. They have a rounded head, and yellow eyes with white eyebrows. The young are brown on the head, back, and wings with a white belly and chest. Burrowing Owls are comparatively easy to see because they are often active in daylight, and are surprisingly bold and approachable. The females are usually darker than the males.
Size: Length 21.6-28 cm (8.5-11 inches) Wingspan 50.8-61.0 cm (20-24 inches)
Weight 170.1-214g (6-7.5 oz)
Habits: Burrowing owls generally active at dusk and dawn, but sometimes at night also. They are highly terrestrial, and are often seen perched on a mound of dirt, telegraph or fence post - frequently on one foot.
Voice: Burrowing Owls are very vocal, and have a wide range of different calls. The main call is given only by adult males, usually when near the burrow to attract a female. A two-syllable "who-who" is given at the entrance of a promising burrow. This call is also associated with breeding, and territory defence.
Hunting & Food: Burrowing Owls feed on a wide variety of prey, changing food habits as location and time of year determine availability. Large arthropods, mainly beetles and grasshoppers, comprise a large portion of their diet. Small mammals, especially mice, rats, gophers, and ground squirrels, are also important food items.
Mortality: Burrowing Owls are able to live for at least 9 years in the wild and over 10 years in captivity.
Habitat: Burrowing Owls are found in open, dry grasslands, agricultural and range lands, and desert habitats often associated with burrowing animals, particularly prairie dogs, ground squirrels and badgers. They can also inhabit grass, forb, and shrub stages of pinyon and ponderosa pine habitats. They commonly perch on fence posts or on top of mounds outside the burrow.
Distribution: Burrowing Owls are present in North America, and breed across the grassland regions of southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitobaand. They extend south into Mexico, Central America and South America but populations have declined in many areas due to human-caused habitat loss or alteration. Birds from the northern part of the U.S. and Canada are migratory. |
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| Altered Image #1
alejandroguzman
(452)
iTTL-flash simulation
Edited by:delfi
![Silver Star Critiquer/Silver Workshop Editor [C: 30 W: 35 N: 7]](http://i1.treknature.com/misc/s-s-n.gif) (90) |
Hi Alejandro, how's it going? I did a workshop on your picture.
In the source pic the subject has been flashed-flat. As a result, colors of both the owl and branch are slightly washed out. Ofcourse if in this difficult situation the intelligent (and expensive !) iTTL-flash system had been used, a slightly better lighting and imaging of the subject would have been accomplished.
In this workshop therefore, I simulated by means of Post-Processing, exactly how the owl would have looked if the more advanced iTTL-flash system had been used.
Technique:
Quality-check; background denoised -selected, despeckled and brightness lowered (-10) to compensate for the noisy operation of the ISO-400 setting of this particular digital camera in complete darkness; foreground (subject) selected and processed for brightness/contrast-levels with slight color-correction; slightly more sharpened (USM); red-eye reduction -left eye only, to correct for (red-)eye symmetry (selected, R-channel attenuated).
(for best comparison, please compare side-by-side)
I hope this may be helpful.
Greetings, Dimitri.
Copyright df, November 27th 2005 /1:25AM |
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