Long-eared Owl

This isn't for critique, it's for YEEHAA! I spent a long time trying to find long-eared owls to film and today I succeeded! Great! Thanks for your patience. (I did film a golden eagle too and they are my favorite birds but the owl was the best today!)

ps it was blowing a gale and close to freezing, my hands needed therapy afterwards!

Way to go, Bill. Congratulations.

I've never seen one of these guys. I think I'm outside their range.

They have them in the Uk where I am from but I was never interested in owls when I was there, so I have some catching up to do.

Glad you got your shot. Which is a good image, thanks for sharing.

Congratulations, Bill. That's more of a Long-eared Owl than we usually see in photos posted here. Good work.

Bill: This is GREAT!! Congrats on your efforts. Hoping the fingers will recover

Congrats Bill. I've only ever seen this species twice. I'm also from the jolly UK.

Jack, I was standing in the open about 20-30ft away I suppose, using the Nikon D300 with a 300/4 lens and TC17 so makes 500mm at f6.7 He was calm enough that I could go get a tripod and use that and drop the ISO to 400, 1/250secs. I didn't have to crop much. The wind was blowing a gale and the bird and I both were waving around a fair bit.

Great shot, Bill. Congrats on capturing a nemesis bird, especially when the bird is so far out in the open. I'm still looking for my first sighting of this species.......

Beauty!! I tried to find these guys out at Amherst Island, Ontario. The place was loaded with them. However I arrived too late. A Barred owl had taken over the area where they were seen. It had even eaten a few. So, no L-E Owls there anymore. They took off. Perhaps they are somewhere else on the island, maybe on the west side with the Short-eared Owls. One of these days I may return there to check.

Bill, YeeHaa! I so like seeing owls in there natural habitat. Just Wonderful. Ross