Short-eared Owl

This is the same bird as in my post of 8/08/10 but taken 5 frames later. As I've mentioned before in this series, this male would capture a vole, then land on one of two favorite perches close to the nest while he was carrying the vole in his talons. Then just before taking off to deliver the vole to the female and chicks he would transfer the vole from talons to beak. Here he is about to land on the small sagebrush directly beneath him (one of those two "favorite perches").

This isn't as clean a shot as some of the others but I liked his intense focus on the perch and the better look at the habitat. Some may prefer that I clone the two grass stems coming off the top of the head and wing but I deliberately chose to leave them be. I was always fighting for light with these owls in flight and I think I was at the limits of my gear with these birds in this situation.

7D, 1/1000, f/5.6, ISO 800, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, shot from pickup window on 7/25/10 at Red Rock Lakes NWR, cropped to 53% of original image, slight highlight reduction in ACR, sharpened parts of the bird, no additional processing or adjustments, natural light, not set up, baited or called in

Larger version provided

Comments/critique appreciated