I have been seeing a Great Horned Owl near the same location while driving the auto tour road at the Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma. It would be close to the road just before sunrise, but it would move away from the road when I drove into the area.
On this day I had my window down and when I got into the area, I could hear several Horned Owls communicating with each other. They were next to the road. I observed one Owl giving another Owl the head of a Pied-billed Grebe. I didn’t have enough light to photograph this exchange. After the exchange I started photographing the Owl with the head, anyway. My ISO was high and my shutter speed was low, so I didn’t expect the photos to turn out.
A baby Horned Owl was in another tree across the road from the adult Owl. This Owl was in a terrible area for a photo. They flew to an area away from the road and too far for me to photograph.
I was hand-holding my camera and lens outside my pickup. I braced the camera on the frame of my pickup to keep it steady to get the photo. It pleasantly surprised me to have a photo turn out with the settings I was using (see below).
Gear Used:
- Camera: Fujifilm X-T3
- Lens: Canon EF 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS II (attached with a Fringer EF-FX Pro)
Technical:
- Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge (Oklahoma)
- Date and Time Taken: March 27, 2021 (07:01 A. M.)
- Aperture Priority
- Aperture: f5.6
- Shutter speed: 1/40 (as determined by the camera)
- ISO: 5000
- White Balance: Auto
- Metering Mode: Multi
- Back-button Focus
- Single Point Continuous Auto Focus
- Exposure Compensation: +1
- Focal Length: 400 mm
- Processed With Luminar 4