Barred Owls At Circle B Bar Reserve

Just as I was heading back to my car after a couple of hours at the Circle B Bar Reserve, I noticed a group of photographers pointing their cameras up in the trees at the start of the Herons Hideout trail.

Of course, when you see that kind of behavior taking place, you know that something good is usually going on that is worthy of a photograph. And sure enough, there was a pair of barred owls in the oak trees hooting loudly back and forth to one another.

On occasions like this you are very happy to have as much focal length as you can on your camera because anything short of about 300mm just isn't going to cut it unless you plan on doing some really radical cropping in post-processing.

One of the features I like about the Sony A57 camera that I just added to my arsenal is that it has a digital zoom built into the camera that can extend the optical zoom focal length of your lens and give you just a little more reach for situations like this, without losing too much image quality. I am not a fan of many of the digital zooms out there, but this one has been given very high marks by many knowledgeable photographers and after using it in the field, I agree with their assessment.

Here are some of the barred owl shots I took last Friday using the additional focal length provided by the digital zoom:

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

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