Lights, Camera, Action

The learning curve of capturing video with the Canon 5dmk2, making very basic editing of the video for its duration, and uploading it to the web for viewing was accomplished in the past few weeks.

The Burrowing Owl above was photographed at Cape Coral Library in April 2010.

The subject of the video involves the mating behavior of the Florida Burrowing Owl which has been observed with concerted effort at Cape Coral on Florida's west coast about two hours south of Tampa.

Although only having observed the Burrowing Owls for the first time in the 2010 mating season, I have devoted countless hours to learn about the behavior of these birds that occasionally provide an opportunity to document their behavior visually for a mere few seconds at a time.

The Common Gallinule with juvenile and White Ibis above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

There have been a few instances when the mating event was observed to occur twice with the same pair of birds within 10 minutes.

I haven't devoted an entire day to the observation of the birds uninterrupted, so cannot speculate the average number of times the birds may attempt to copulate in a day.

The Common Gallinule juvenile above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

Mating behavior certainly occurs daily, however, as I have observed the behavior with numerous pairs of Burrowing Owls in the neighborhood of the Cape Coral Library and Skyline Boulevard.

A visit to the area on 6 May 2010 with hopes of observing owlets as anticipated proved to show that the offspring are relatively late in their arrival this year potentially due to unusually cold winter weather and early heavy rains last month that may have flooded burrows.

The White Ibis above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

Mating was also not observed yesterday although both male and female owls were seen at the entrance to many burrows in the area.

Mating will typically last for mere seconds which offers great challenges in photographing the event successfully.

The Anhinga above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

Tim Rucci commented to me this week that there might be disturbance of Burrowing Owl behavior with the use of flash photography.

The owls have not appeared to be affected by the accessory at all.

The Scarlet Ibis above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

My video capture of a typical mating of the owls can be seen here and is also now a permanent link from the sidebar at my blog.

It is interesting that certain owls will apparently only mate after sunset, yet others will do so in late afternoon hours, perhaps distinguishing the maturity of the owls.

The White Ibis above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

I have noted most recently that the male is much more distinguishable from the female as coloration in his feathers is evidently bleached from the sun that has become ever stronger as each spring day passes.

In addition to observing the owls this past week, I also made another trip to Lakes Regional Park to attempt to observe the Scarlet Ibis which I was able to do and photograph the species for the first time.

The Common Gallinule juvenile above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

I also observed the juvenile Common Moorhen that was surprisingly absent from the exact same location the day before.