Only a Great Gray Owl and I enjoyed the early morning light in the frozen marsh along the AT on the trail to Velvet Rocks in Hanover this morning. I was privileged to spend from 7:54 to 8:32 AM alone with this magnificent owl. The sun was at its back pretty much the whole time, and while I love photographing with back light, I generally prefer birds with front light. But I sure wasn’t complaining. This was going to be better than the 7 seconds I spent with the owl Sunday morning.
I bushwhacked in to the marsh taking the shorter but more challenging route. As I emerged from the woods there it was right in front of me. I shot this at ISO 1600 with EC=+2.67 for those of you who understand what these numbers mean. Since the owl was strongly backlit I needed to add light to keep it from being a silhouette. This is a full-frame image—no cropping applied.
To the right is the tree where I first found it, photographed three days earlier. There were a number of photographers and birders hoping to catch sight of the owl that day.
Meanwhile out on Trescott Road the cars were piling up Monday morning.
The owl mainly ignored me while seemingly scanning for game. It eventually moved to a snag and then to another snag making its way to the boardwalk. From there it flew into a small corner of the wetland to the east of the boardwalk. Below is an uncropped photo taken with a 300mm lens with a “1.5 magnification” camera.
The pair of photos below may give you a feel for the scene. You can see the boardwalk with the owl in the tree nearby. And you can see where it stopped to the east of the boardwalk before leaving the wetland.
Below them I present a slide show of some of the photos I took this morning.
