This Snowy Owl was was not baited BUT was a captive up to 2 seconds before this image was exposed. The story is: She was found in Old Orchard Beach, Maine on 10-20-08 with a injured wing. Taken to the Center For Wildlife in Cape Neddick, Maine for care. The Owl rehabbed well and was released yesterday at Plum Island, Massachusetts since all of the early Snowys seen in Maine have moved South the Audubon biologist involved feel that PI would be best. If you want to see more of the release here is a link: http://www.bob-malbon-photo.smugmug....58374839_vr3C7
exif: iso 400, Manual Ex., 1/1600 at f7.1, aiServo - 1DMk3 on 500f4 handheld
Bob
Last edited by Bob Malbon; 01-20-2009 at 02:51 PM.
Reason: Grammer! Which still might be wrong but this is not an English class!!
Thanks for the story. Always heartwarming when the end result is a positive one :-) A few distracting elements in the BG are present. Perhaps cropping tighter to the right would make it look less like an accidental clip of the wing.
Very nice shot Bob, I would be tempted to either crop the left (bird's right) wing or rebuild the clipped one. Here is the edit I did of it:
Wing: Quick mask the left wing, flip, transform, and clean up the edge.
BG: Cloned a clean(er) section all the way across and then QM a strong Guassian Blur (9.5 pixels)
Doug, Nice job!!! I did try the crop the you and Daniel suggested but it is nice to have the whole wing!
Every time I photograph a "release" I say that it is way harder than working in the wild. That was at 1/1600 and the wings show motion blur! All released birds seem to take off at light speed! Bob
Good on you Bob! Congrats on a great image and successful release. I am also a wildlife carer here Down Under, but not licensed to rehab raptors, as they are just too specialized. I do hope to undertake further handling training this year as we get quite a few owls and diurnal species injured. So even rescuing would be awesome.
Snowy Owl in Flight
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