Photographing Owls

Saturday, I visited the Cascades Raptor Center.  I hadn't been in a while, and with the Governor's Freeze coming up, the center was going to be closed for a few weeks.  

I managed to get there at opening; the entire time I was there there were maybe four other families there.  Oregon got slammed with a winter storm Friday, and Saturday was wet and grey (luckily there wasn't too much rain), which probably accounted for the place not being a mob scene.   The aviaries are all outside, and masks are required, so it's very easy to maintain social distancing.  

During this visit, Dmitri, a Eurasian Eagle-Owl, was brought out of his aviary.  The best photographs of the raptors happen when they are out from behind bars, and Dmitiri is particularly photogenic.  

I made the rounds of the center twice, making sure to linger outside the aviaries of Atticus (Bald Eagle), Banjo (Eastern Red-tailed Hawk), Lethe (Turkey Vulture), and Dante (Golden Eagle).   And Newton (Goshawk), who actually seemed to be squeaking at me -- all of the resident birds seemed extra vocal this visit (except for Danu (Osprey) who is always extra vocal. 

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Oregon is gearing up for a two week Governor's Freeze to try to flatten then infection curve of COVID-19.  This means that Thanksgiving is going to be kind of solo this year -- we might go and visit my folks and talk to them through a window on the porch, but we won't be sharing a meal, unless it's a virtual Zoom-sgiving. 

Sunny Day at the Raptor Center

Wednesday was such a clear and sunny day that I went to the Cascades Raptor Center.  Again.

The nice thing about visiting them during a weekday afternoon is that there's fewer visitors there, and I don't have to worry about being One of Those Photographers Who Stands In Front of Everything so much.

Wednesday was the brightest day I've visited, which introduced new challenges photographing the residents.  I'm not sure if using an ISO at 800 is a good thing or a bad thing--on one hand, a number of the raptors think a camera tripod is the handle to a bird net vets use, and a fast film speed means I don't have to use the tripod to get a still shot.  On the other hand, some of my photos seemed washed out, and I'm wondering if a lower ISO and a slightly slower shutter speed would have resulted in better hues.

Dmitri (Eurasian Eagle-Owl), looked stereotypically professorial in his aviary.   In addition to being a photogenic animal to begin with, his aviary is lined up along a east-west axis, which allows for good lighting on him and not on the aviary mesh.   He wasn't as vocal this time around as he was the other day.

This time around, I managed to catch Banjo (Eastern Red-tailed Hawk) being fed outside her aviary.  Usually, Banjo perches near the front of her enclosure and puffs up her chest feathers; this is cool, because Banjo's chest feathers have a kind of crescent and oak-leaf, brown-and-cream pattern on them.  I really do want to study the design on her feathers and transfer it to a creamy, ruffled scarf.

Eating snacks on a leather glove, she looks more streamlined.  I hadn't realized how dark she is on top because her perch is above eye level.  I felt lucky to see her out of her aviary, and I especially appreciated being able to get a photo of her with her wings spread -- the arcs and curves of the wings are beautiful, and the arrays of patterned feathers are fascinating.

Ra (Burrowing Owl) was out and about, and many of the other residents were resting.

It did occur to me that I had just visited the Center four days prior, and that this second visit was possibly a little obsessive.  I enjoy visiting, and I'm trying to work out why.  Part of it is raptors are cool; part of it is a desire to appreciate their natural beauty, with a notion of attempting to reproduce it in art; part of it is the Center is in a wooded area that's relaxing; part of it is that it's an excuse to photograph things.  In any case, I think I do want to pace myself so I don't burn out on it

I visited everyone, and then was thinking that I should head back home when Dante (Golden Eagle) came out for his feeding and training session.

Dante is a vocal raptor, and makes a lot of excited squeaky noises as he's fed bits of rabbit haunch.  What was most interesting was that his handler had to get some more rabbit bits, and Dante knew the tread of his walk across the gravel from twenty-five feet away on the other side of a fence.

Dante is also handsome and photogenic.   He also is dog-like with respect to food.  As I've written before, Dante slobbers a lot in order to be able to swallow rabbit haunches whole.  The new Gross Bird Fact I learned was that he sometimes cleans post-feeding fur bits off of his beak by rubbing it on his handler's beard.

I'm pretty sure this is a few degrees worse than having Smokey groom us.

Valentines and Owls

Whew.  What an odd week.  Monday at work there was a lot of network problems, which made it feel like a stereo-typical Mercury Retrograde Day.  It was a rainy week, too, which made things like the electric throw extremely attractive.  I forget which day having the throw really helped my feet feel like something I could walk on instead of places where someone had stuck icy-cold electrodes into my toes.


Saturday, Mark and I went for a walk downtown and had a belated Valentine's Snack.  Our reasoning was that if we tried to eat on Friday night, we'd be packed in between wall-to-wall Valentine's Day Couples.  We found a cute little place on Willamette and 14th, which used to be a Really Large Antique Store, but is now a series of Big City Style cafes and eateries.  Our stop was a brewery-pub with a kind of Arts And Crafts feel.  We ate a lot of yummy and fatty snacks, the most popular being battered and fried cauliflower, dipped in plum sauce.


Sunday, the skies cleared, which made it a good day to visit the Cascades Raptor Center.  I turned up the ISO to 800 and left the tripod home.  This time around I missed events where the birds were brought out of their aviaries, so I failed to have cage-free photos.  I did manage to blur out some bars while taking photos of Dimitri the Eurasian Eagle-owl.  The sunlight streamed into his aviary at just the right angle, and, fortuitously, was illuminating him and not the mesh of his enclosure.  I even managed to get a few photos of him saying, "Who-whooo," which makes the white feathers at his throat bulge out.

Mark joined me and we visited Puck, who flew up to the edge of the aviary to show us the mouse tail he was eating.  Other bits of mouse appeared to be stashed away at various corners of his enclosure.  Newton seemed to be speaking to Mark, and we wondered if he wanted us to feed him.  Apollonia wasn't as agitated as she's appeared in the past.

Just before we left, we got to see Dimitri get weighed and fed--he became excited, and made a deep sound like, "Naaaah, naaaah!" which I thought was a small child or possibly the sound created by some folks who 3-D printed an Ancient Egyptian's larynx.  But no, it was Dimitri, which became clear when he flew nearer, and said, "Naaaaaaah!" from a perch right next to us.   Then a trainer came in and directed him to roost on a scale and other perches for pieces of rat.


I managed to get to the Gym Monday (as previously reported), Wednesday, and Friday; doing the Push-Pull, the Aerobic, and the Push-Pull routines, respectively.  


On the writing front, I managed to polish and submit a story.  I should submit some more.

Owls, Writing, and Gyms

This is a picture of Dmitri, a Eurasian Eagle-Owl.  Eagle-Owls have bright orange eyes, in contrast to other owls, which have yellow eyes. I like this photo because Dmitri is looking to the left, which shows off the structure of his face more clearly than if he were looking straight into the camera.  Also, he's got a bit of a contrapposto pose.

On the writing front:  Tuesday night was not the best writing night, I started a little late and I was wound up from a political discussion.  I found an old manuscript from a while back that would like to submit.  I need to do a couple of passes on it for clunky language, some staging errors, and dated cell phone usage.   Okay, and the off-stage scene should come on-stage.

Wednesday, I went to the gym and did the aerobic routine.