Audubon Finish By A Nose

The 2nd Annual 2010 Audubon Magazine "Birds in Focus" photo contest came to a close this week with it to be featured in its Jan/Feb 2011 issue.

The Burrowing Owl image submitted to Audubon above was photographed near Cape Coral Library in 2010.

While the contest has allowed up to ten images to be submitted this year, I was only able to get six entered for consideration by the deadline.

Unlike last year, Audubon allowed a single image to be submitted this year without paying an entry fee.

The Burrowing Owl image submitted to Audubon above was photographed near Cape Coral Library in 2010.

This year's contest allowed me to have a better understanding of the importance of ensuring easy identification of image files by describing and dating them.

I had attempted to salvage a sluggish computer seemingly overburdened with images (hard drive at 97 percent capacity) by transferring the files to external hard drives while not considering an easy way to identify what the photo files represented.

The Burrowing Owl image submitted to Audubon above was photographed near Cape Coral Library in 2010.

I recall Bob Duckwall advising me that he was reading a book on the subject of how to easily identify stored images quite some time ago.

My primary purpose in entering the Audubon contest the last couple of years has been to offer enlightenment and amusement of the natural wildlife beauty that can readily be seen for the most part in southwest Florida.

The Burrowing Owl image submitted to Audubon above was photographed near Cape Coral Library in 2010.

With the discovery of Burrowing Owl in February 2010, which at the time was a goal merely to document the species as seen in Florida, the experience led to the lion's share of my time devoted to wildlife observation in the early part of the year.

The first encounter made 26 February 2010 led to observation of a mating event that evening mere minutes after sunset.

The Burrowing Owl image submitted to Audubon above was photographed near Cape Coral Library in 2010.

With it noted in David Sibley's Guide to Bird Life and Behavior that mating activity of Burrowing Owls is not well documented, 22 additional trips to Cape Coral, Florida, were made as late as 27 June 2010 this season to help improve the record.

Photography of a mating Burring Owl event requires the inordinate time that might be expected to be spent observing any bird species in the creation of an interesting wildlife image.

The Burrowing Owl image submitted to Audubon above was photographed near Cape Coral Library in 2010.

Such was the case with as many as several hours of observation time devoted to each of seven burrows studied with no guarantee that the owls occupying them would be observed to mate, an event that lasts from five to seven seconds, typically.

Unseasonal late winter/ early spring heavy rains this year were attributed to the delay in the observation of Burrowing Owl fledglings through the flooding of the burrows, but there were many juvenile owls observed on my last visit to Cape Coral as of this writing.