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 By Wayne Lynch & Aubrey Lang 
Owls and winter seem to go together naturally. In Canada and the northern United States, where winter lingers for half the year or more, owls are welcome year-round residents in many areas. In fact, in Alberta where we live, ten species of owls overwinter, and every year we can't wait for the snowflakes to start flying, so that we can get outdoors and "bag" a few of the local winter hooters on celluloid. Before you can photograph an owl, first you have to find one, and here are four easy ways we do that: #1 Eavesdrop on local nature clubs and birding hotlines. Birdwatchers are generally a friendly, helpful bunch of folks and they will usually tell you about any traditional owl-rich areas in your region (that's how Wayne originally found out about the screech owls in Ottawa). Also, many nature clubs run weekend field trips, led by a local expert, to locate winter owls, and visitors are always welcome to tag along. As well, every Christmas, over 1500 natural history societies throughout North America conduct an annual bird count and publish the results afterwards. By reviewing bird counts from previous years you can learn where winter owls are commonly seen in most of the populated areas of the continent. Birding Hotlines are another good source of owl info (the telephone numbers are usually listed at the local library). The hotlines are simply taped messages listing recent rare or unusual bird sightings and their locations, and the messages are usually updated every week or so. The Birding Hotline in Ottawa was how we learned about the phenomenal "owlfest" that happened on Amherst Island along the northern shore of Lake Ontario in the winter of 1979. That winter, there were at least 160 owls of 10 different species hunting on the island, which is barely 15 miles long! Owlers from as far away as Texas came to the island that winter. #2 Listen to the birds. During the day, many owls, especially the smaller ones such as northern saw-whets, boreal owls, northern pygmy owls, and long-eared owls hide in thick shrubbery and bushy conifers. When foraging bluejays, chickadees, or redpolls happen to locate one of these hidden owls, they chatter and chirp excitedly. This noisy commotion summons any other songbirds in the neighborhood and together they mob the owl in an effort to intimidate it and drive it away. We have found many owls in this way. #3 Prospect for poop, and gawk at guano. Many wintering owls use the same roost tree day after day, and the branches and ground underneath the roost soon become soiled with conspicuous, gooey, white drippy droppings. In winter, long-eared owls roost communally, and a typical roost tree contains 2 to 20 birds, but up to 100 have been reported. Now, if you can't see the whitewash under a tree like that then we suggest you sell your camera. The ground below roost sites is also frequently littered with pellets - compact, cigar-shaped wads of undigested bones, teeth and fur that owls regularly regurgitate. Several years ago, Aubrey found 50 thumb-sized pellets under a large spruce tree that was the winter hideout of a great horned owl. First she found the pellets, then we got great mug shots of the horned hooter. #4 Cruise the roads. Driving slowly along highways and backroads is probably our most successful way of finding winter owls. Great gray owls, northern hawk owls and snowy owls frequently hunt the ditches alongside roadways for voles and mice, which tunnel, beneath the snow. These large conspicuous owls are fairly easy to locate. In some years, any, or all of these three northern owls may literally flood into the forests and prairies of southern Canada and the northern United States and stay throughout the winter. This happens roughly every 3 to 5 years when rodent populations in the boreal forest or arctic crash. The winter of 1996/97 was one of those years. In February, 1997, we attended a symposium on the Biology and Conservation of the Owls of the Northern Hemisphere (you see, we really are hardcore owl freaks) held in Winnipeg, Manitoba. During the conference we joined a group of international owl scientists on a field trip southeast of the city. In one afternoon, the busload of us located 2 snowy owls, 19 great gray owls and 32 hawk owls. On board with us was a middle-aged Japanese biologist whose dream it was to see just one hawk owl in her life. She wore a permanent smile for the rest of the day. Two weeks later, local birder Rudolf Koes, while searching the same area, easily beat the bunch of us and found a phenomenal 4 snowy owls, 32 great gray owls and 55 hawk owls, a world record! Riding the roads is also the best way we know to find nesting great horned owls. In our area, these large owls are the first birds to nest, often laying eggs in the early days of March, long before the end of winter. Typically, great horned owls use the old stick nests of crows and hawks, and the owl's distinctive feathery ear tufts can be seen sticking above the rim of their nests from several hundred yards away. On a Sunday drive in March, armed with binoculars and a spotting scope, we can almost always find at least three or four nesting great horned owls in the aspen woodlands along the backroads around Calgary. Since this is a photography column I guess we had better start gabbing about photography and stop all the birding chatter. So, how then do we photograph winter owls once we have found them? To begin with, we virtually never photograph winter owls at night. (Do you realize how cold and dark it is in Canada in the middle of winter?) So, all of our suggestions relate to daytime shooting. There are basically just two different field situations to consider — owls roosting in thick shrubbery, and owls hunting in the open along roadsides. The owls that roost in thickets do so to hide from predators (including larger owls), and to shelter themselves from the elements. Invariably, the birds are tucked in the shadows so supplementary flash is crucial. You can use full TTL flash, but if you are using the common recommended synch speed of 1/250 of a second and a relatively small aperture to yield good depth of field then chances are you will end up with an owl portrait set against a stark black background. We prefer the more pleasing results achieved with balanced "fill flash." In this case, the film registers both the background, which is lighted by daylight, and the owl, which is lighted by the flash. We use Nikon flashes (SB24, SB25, SB28) on the "balanced fill" mode and punch in different compensations on the flash unit depending upon the tone of the subject. If the subject is a dark tone or black (which is rarely the case when we photograph owls) we make no compensation to the flash output. When the subject is a medium tone (the tone of many owls) we set the flash compensation at -2/3 of a stop, and when the subject is very pale or white we set the compensation at -1 1/3 stops. These compensation settings yield the fill flash effects that WE like, and you should experiment and adjust the settings to suit your own tastes. Roosting owls are frequently quite tame (Wayne has touched the breast feathers of a roosting saw-whet with his fingertip), so we often use small focal length lenses, typically in the 100mm to 200mm range. The need for really "big glass" comes when you move to shooting owls which are hunting in the open along roadsides. Then, we generally use 500mm or 600mm lenses, and often enough we haul out Big Bertha, our 800mm bazooka, and we may even add a 1.4X teleconverter on her which increases the focal length to 1120mm (That's 22 power. Excuse us for a moment, will you? Wayne started to hyperventilate and broke out into a cold sweat thinking about his optical heartthrob.) When shooting winter hooters, bigger often is better. As always, we try to use the slowest film speed possible. For perching owls, we always use Fujichrome Velvia, and for owls on the wing we jump up to an ISO 100 or ISO 200 speed film. Our fast film "flavor of the moment" is Fujichrome MS100/1000, but we don't really believe it makes a whole lot of difference which brand of film you use in this speed range. Flying owls seem to slowly flap and glide along, but they are actually moving surprisingly fast. The wingtips of a flying owl need a shutter speed of at least 1/1000 of a second, or faster, to prevent blur, so we generally shoot our big lenses at the widest aperture possible which allows us to use such fast shutter speeds. A trick we use to increase our odds with hunting owls is to lure them closer with a small mouse-sized block of wood covered with brown fur and tied to the end of a strong piece of fishing line. Once we locate an owl perched on a fencepost, telephone pole or tree beside the road (great gray owls, hawk owls and snowy owls are easiest to trick) we cast "Willie," our imitation mouse, out across the snow and then reel him back to us slowly. Our good friend Dr. Gordon Court, an incurable raptor junkie, taught us the fine points of this technique, and he has suckered, or should we say persuaded, hawk owls to fly to him from half a mile away. Great grays need to be 
closer, but the dummy mouse still works on them from as much as 50 yards
away. Gordon told us that in fact, all ten species of winter owls found in
Alberta have been recorded coming to such artificial lures — at least for a
look. Never lure in the same owl more than once or twice. You may deplete
the bird's energy reserves, which it needs to hunt real prey and survive the
winter in good condition.The hawk owl's great interest in small fluffy mouse-sized objects has, at least once, resulted in a surprising encounter. Gordon told us the story of an Alberta forester who was hiking up a snowy cutline in the middle of winter. The man was wearing a stylish wool cap adorned with a black pom-pom dangling from the end of a short piece of yarn. Not surprisingly, the pom-pom bounced about enticingly (at least to a hungry owl) as the fellow walked along. Out of nowhere, a hawk owl swooped down and plucked the pom-pom, with the cap attached, and flew away with its prize.
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Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc. P.O. Box 655, Vashon Island, Washington USA 98070 Phone: (206) 463-5383 Fax: (206) 463-5484 Email: info@photosafaris.com Copyright © 2008, Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc. |