You may enlarge any image in this blog by clicking on it. Click again for a detailed view.
It’s been a few weeks since I last visited southern Arizona’s farmlands. It’s a difficult time to drive those roads. We’re now in the midst of the hottest and driest part of the year with no rainfall for the past three months and daytime high temperatures averaging well above 100 degrees (above 38 degrees Celsius). Wildlife generally is active only at night or for a couple of hours just after sunrise and at or just after sunset.
I intend to go there tomorrow morning with a friend to see what’s going on. I’m particularly interested in the status of Burrowing Owl families. By now, the young owlets should have emerged from their families’ burrows and should be capable of flight. Driving around in miserable heat and dust will be well worth it if I can find and photograph a family of these birds.
On my last trip there I was able to photograph this individual, likely a male, standing guard over his family’s burrow.
The behavior that I documented in this image is typical. Burrowing Owls, unlike many related owl species, can be active in daylight. When the owls are raising families it is common for the males to sit on relatively high perches for hours at a time, in order to scan the surrounding countryside for possible food or danger. In the table-flat farmlands, a meter tall gas pipeline marker makes an ideal perch.
Image made with a Canon R5, Canon EF 400mm f4 DO II lens+Canon EF 1.4x telextender, M setting (auto ISO), ISO 800, f5.6 @ 1/5000.
Sonoran Images 