Grip. Stretch. Snap...

[Steve Kaluski]

Well, with little rain, the earth & soil is quite hard and very dry, so the owlets are quite often feeding on large, green, succulent caterpillars. If you try and find them yourself, you simply can't, but they see to with ease. So in digging a little area for them it can provide other nutritional tit bits like this 'elasticated' worm it seems.

Steve
Subject: Little owlet eating an earthworm (Athene noctua)
Location: UK
Camera: Canon 1DX
Lens: 500f/4 plus 1.4x
Exposure: 1/800s at f/8 ISO1250 0 stop compensation Wimberley head/Gitzo tripod

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Amazing capture, both by you and the Owlet Steve :-) nice clean BG, superb exposure and sharpness!

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Steve, I like the feeding behaviour of this owlet, which gives the image a little something extra. Excellent sharpness and exposure. I'd crop a little from the right to reduce the empty space there.

[Girish Prahalad]

superb image! particularly like the shooting angle & the DOF.
The pose, details & BG are excellent.

[Randy Stout]

Steve:

Sharp, well exposed, nice action/pose. In a perfect world, would prefer the trunk not merge with the head, but still a very effective image.

Cheers

Randy

[Steve Kaluski]

Thanks folks, in an ideal world I totally agree Randy, the trouble is, I have no say where or what these little buggers do, plus I have another camera & lens between this one for low level work. Who said men can't, 'multi task?' LOL!

[Daniel Cadieux]

I like the feeding behaviour and "succulent" food item, good techs too. Crystal clear eye! I must admit I am not crazy about the log in the FG...I assume you could not slowly place yourself in front of the subject with the log parallel to the sensor?

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Daniel, once I am in position there is no moving for at least 3-4 hours as I never know where these guys are going to be and therefore I have to gamble in my placement sadly. Actually quick question, if you set your SS to 'silent mode' does the shutter still react at the same speed as it would if you are single shot? The reason is that any wide angle shots spooks the owls big time? Any thoughts.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

It looks very tasty, or at least for the owl! cool species and it's great to see it working hard to get his meal, I do like the BG light but I wish the bird was not touching the log with it head.

[Petros Petrou]

Very cool image. I haven't seen this behavior before. Nice soft light, great detail and clean soft BG, It would be perfect if he other feet was visible but I understand that there was nothing you could do about that. An image I would be glad to have it myself. TFS