Two great horned owlets stand shoulder to shoulder within an oak grove in Stevens Creek County Park.

I captured this image on April 14th, 2011 on my second visit to visit a family of great horned owls in Stevens Creek Park. Upon arrival at the Madrone picnic area, I quickly located all three owlets and one of their parents. None of the owls was in a very favorable position for a photograph, being situated very high with multiple obstructing branches. A bit of patience paid off, however, as I was surprised to find out that the owlets moved from branch to branch frequently, rather than just snoozing the day away as I had been expecting.

Even though the owlets had not been out of the nest much more than a week, they were surprisingly mobile as they climbed around their treetop perches using their massive talons to grip the oak branches, assisted by the occasional wing flap. Finally, two of the owlets settled very close to one another on an branch that afforded me a clear view. By now it was nearly seven in the evening, and in the densely forested oak grove the light was becoming quite dim, though because the sun had dipped below a hillside to the west, harsh shadows produced by direct sunlight were no longer an issue. With my Canon 1D Mark IV, I can confidently shoot at high ISO values (ISO 3200 in this case). The low noise signature of this camera combined with the powerful noise reduction algorithms in Adobe Lightroom 3 RAW file converter allow me to make gorgeous prints without sacrificing detail.