Sooty Owl making hanging vertically look easy.

Photos by Richard Jackson of owlphotographer.com

Lots of bird pics there, plus photography advice on taking photos of wild owls.

    • Yondoza@sh.itjust.works
      5·
      9 months ago

      I feel so bad for the owls in night shots with the flash on. Look how huge their pupils are! They’re gonna be seeing spots for days!

      • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
        5·
        9 months ago

        I know! I always think about that too!

        I was really annoyed the other day in the update article about Flaco the Eagle Owl, a lady called police because he was on her balcony and she was worried he was hurt, and they just shined lights in his face until he flew off. So rude! 😔

        They probably don’t enjoy it an more than we do, but they do sound to be equipped to handle it better than we’re able to. Their eyes have some really cool powers!

        From the Owl Research Institute:

        Towards the back of the eye, they have a high number of specialized photoreceptors known as rods, which help the owl see well in low-light conditions but do not help with seeing colors. Since these rod cells make Great Horned Owls so susceptible to light changes, they are able to dilate and constrict their pupil quite quickly with the help of certain tiny muscles. Our eyes do this too; if you’ve ever turned on the lights too quickly in a dark room, you’ve felt the shock on your eyes! This is because your pupils were struggling to adjust quickly to the dramatic light change. A Great Horned Owl can actually constrict its pupils in 176 milliseconds or less after a flash of light. Dilation is not quite as fast, taking one full second for the owl’s eyes to adjust.

    • Chetzemoka
      2·
      9 months ago

      It’s really neat to see this pic during the day when you can clearly see the yellow irises. I don’t know why my brain kind of assumed these classically black-eyed owls just had really dark irises, as opposed to their pupils just being so large at night that you can’t see iris at all

      • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
        3·
        9 months ago

        Owl eyes come in a wide range of colors. There are a bunch with dark brown or black eyes, but many times they are just really dilated. If you haven’t seen the comment below, they can dilate them separately from each other and have a lot of manual control over them, and they work really really fast compared to our own eyes.

        Barn Owl

        Flammulated Owl

        Tawny Owl

        Brown Wood Owl

        Checking out what eye color is one of my favorite parts of learning about a new owl!