This is a pigmy owl I captured in the Chilean portion of Patagonia. Even though I used a long lens -- 500mm plus a 1.4x teleconverter making 700mm of focal length -- I was quite close to the owl. It's a very small bird, and I estimate the camera-subject distance was about 30 feet. The reason the owl allowed such a close approach, and I didn't realize it at the time, was that it was completely focused on a mouse in the grass beneath the tree on which the bird was perched. After I took this picture, the owl dove down into the underbrush and came up with its prey. My settings were 1/320, f/6.3, 200 ISO. I took this in 2012 when noise was still a significant problem. If I were to shoot this picture today, I'd raise the ISO so the shutter speed would be at least 1/1000.
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