A local birder told me the location of a Barred Owl, so I went out in the rain to try to find it. Even when knowing where it was, it would be easy to overlook. After finding the owl, I used silent shooting mode on my mirrorless camera and took only a few shots before stepping away. I was looking up at the owl from underneath, so it wasn't worth waiting for a good shot anyway. I spent a few minutes after that trying to get a view of it, and perhaps its face, from farther away. After walking all around the tree and lots of scanning with binoculars I wasn't able to get a view of it. I wonder how many owls I've walked right by without knowing.

The M31 Andromeda Galaxy shot here was a test untracked shot with the Canon RF 85mm F2 MACRO IS STM lens. It's a stack of 149 frames of 1.3s, at f/2 and ISO 1600, for total of about 3.2 minutes of data.

These photos are © 2025 Phil Thompson, all rights reserved.

My "birds in review" collages can be found here.