"Barred Owl, North Idaho" Magnet

We live between a treed canyon and an agricultural field, which is just the place to find raptors that like to nest in the trees and hunt at the field edges where rodents and other prey are more easily found. During the nesting season, Barred Owls put in extra time hunting after daybreak and during the early evening— first, the male feeds the female while she incubates the eggs, and later, they both hunt to feed their owlet babies. For a few weeks in the early spring, I’d been hearing and seeing more than one Barred Owl hunting near our house, so I’m sure they were nesting nearby. Barred Owls are known to be fairly relaxed around people, and I took several days gradually approaching them, which finally allowed me to get some lovely shots of these striking birds while they hunted in their natural environment.