Cuteness That Is Just Cute to the Max

It's been pretty busy but I have gotten 250 images published.There has been a lot of Live New work as well as a few that I even just passed on because there were so many irons in the fire. There are festivals about with more coming up at the end of the month. The weather has been great. 78-81 during the day and 54 at night. That is good sleeping weather and I need that sleep.

It's also the end of the first week without my TV. That was a choice thing. U-verse just got so greedy I pulled the plug on it and my LAN line telephone. For the first time since I was 21, there is not an AT&T in my life. The funny thing is that I have not missed it. I stream my news programs local and national and that's all that I need really. I still want to know what's going on in the world. Besides, I do enjoy listening to Classical. I regained by surround sound and tuner as a unit again with the TV gone. I had forgotten how nice it is to work on the computer and listen to classical in surround sound.

But now that the chicks have branched and even flown to parts unknown. It doesn't seem like that much time has gone by already with the owl nesting season, but I was watching the owls and the red-shoulder hawks since mid January. Here it is clicking away into May already. So, I have a set of images of the owls that readers might like. The published ones are (naturally) better, but for those of you that use stock for your blogs, this will give you some indication of how to use the images in another way if a person steps in while you are shooting and the image comes out with an elbow or a hand. Don't toss those. They can be edited down to remove those things without that aweful  thing they call Photoshop.

Finally, The Payoff!

It's taken more than three months, but finally, being rewarded by a very cautious owl was well worth the effort. The Bard owls were both outside the nest and sitting in two different trees about 20 yards apart. Then the female approached the nest tree looking in to the trunk but not going inside. It makes me wonder if the chicks have hatched.

Later, she flew back up into the tree that she was sitting in before approaching the nest. That was the start of her very cautious entry into her nest. She flew back down to the entry and started to poke her head inside, then she pulled her head out while keeping her body in the same position and looked down at the ground. Slowly, she looked into the tree trunk again and then did the same thing all over.
After about fifteen minutes, she looked back into the hole, then looked straight at me with her head swiveled backwards, then into the hole she went. The male never moved but was watching every move the female was making. Her tail feather could be seen indicating that she was once again back on the nest.

It was an amazing site that I have never observed before. I have seen hawks be careful going to the nest, but it's a whole different thing with an owl and to have seen it was a reward and rewarding.

Days in June

Mom and Dad(upper left)  introduced the two pups in the foreground (lower right).

UPDATE TO POST OF Saturday,June 15,2013.  The question: is it a muskrat or a nutria? The answer is in:

Muskrat is a North American rodent with webbed feet and dark brown fur.

Nutria is a South American rodent with webbed feet and dark brown fur.

What we have here is therefore, a North American rodent called a muskrat!  and since the initial image was posted, there is an update to that as well. Here it is