ML618122349

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

My six year old spotted this bird in the yard. My husband said it was very tame as he approached rather closely and my daughter and her friend were not far off playing on a snow hill. It was perched about 15-20 feet up. When I went outside with my phone, I found the bird perched and resting with its eyes closed. It must have been in the yard for at least thirty minutes. It could have even slept there all morning... It flew soon after I got outside. (I thought I lost these photos but found them when I was cleaning out my phone.) This color is a bit off as its on a phone. The owl was brown (light and dark). From what I can tell, it most resembles Richardson's Adult plumage. My husband called it a "fluff ball". Originally, we looked at images of owls after we saw this one. We determined that it was bigger than the soda-can sized saw-whet we read about and it didn't match those pictures. It was also much smaller than the barred owls I have seen down the road (even fledglings). I kind of ruled out boreal owl back then because there hadn't been reports of any but now that I have birded longer and found the picture, I found it worth the upload. (The time on my camera was 3:43 pm. According to weather history online, it was sunny, 8mph wind and 9 degrees F.) The fourth image is cropped on my phone. My husband said it was perched in either the black ash tree or the boxelder tree.

Technical information

Model

SM-S515DL

ISO

32

Focal length

4.6 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/2.0

Shutter speed

1/516 sec

Dimensions

4000 pixels x 3000 pixels

Original file size

2.44 MB