Burrowing Owl Eyes

[Lana Hays]

OK....I think that someone may have asked this before but I sure can't find it. I photographed some of the Burrowing Owls in Cape Coral yesterday and I ran across this one. It's the only one that I've ever seen like this. I've seen odd pupils in Oystercatchers and flecks in the eyes of gulls.....but nothing like this. Any ideas? (This is a huge crop of the image so it's not the best but I think you can see what I'm talking about.)

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I thought young birds look like this. Let's see if someone knows more about it.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Last year on Artie's SW FLA IPT we photographed the same thing - perhaps the same individual! It was definitely an adult, and we saw it mating with its partner. Was this one near a baseball field? Here's a big crop to show the same eyes :-)

Edit: Studying the patterns of the eyes pretty much looks like the same individual:cool:

[Lana Hays]

Daniel
Yep.....it was at the ballfield. There were 2 of them and appeared to be a mated pair. I probably observed at least 7 pairs of Burrowing Owls yesterday and this was the only one like that.

[Julie Brown]

Very cool capture, Lana. You must be on spring break now. I'm back to work after a week in Big Sur doing a landscape workshop. Enjoy your week, I hope you post some of the images.:)