At least I didn't have to rotate the title 90 degrees.

A long but lovely day at the shelter.

It's funny - I'm always very humbled by compliments on my photos. Very honestly so - I point and click and out of eighty one shots I get a handful of keepers. Yay me. I'm also always ready to admit that it's pretty hard to take a bad picture of such gorgeous beings.

Proving that my method can defeat the most spectacular subject matter, then, I present the following:

Our beloved, majestic Ferruginous Hawk, in a pose very similar to ones I've had immortalized, and which have inspired me to utter the unkindest epithets upon the photographer:



A shot of the Long Eared Owl that speaks for itself:



Happily persistence does pay off with these guys, and the perfection of design prevails.



Adorableness is almost impossible to screw up, thankfully. You can certainly always count on a Short Eared Owl for adorableness, too.



He really was in just the sweetest mood. While he was in a spare cage having his cleaned I took the opportunity to score a shot with some itty bitty owlie feet (there are a lot of owl feet fans in the world!).



He was easy to pick up and handle, and when I went to put him back he stood calmly on my hand looking for a good place to land. When he spotted the food I left on his tree stump he leapt and landed on it, and couldn't have looked more pleased. That moment was simply too cute to disrupt with photography.

Speaking of cute, you can't beat Kestrels for that.



Especially not two Kestrels with one wing each that devotedly leap to protect one another whenever their cage door is opened.



They were in mellow moods too, though. I didn't get screamed at even once. That's no mean feat with Kestrels.

Here's a fellow that doesn't know the meaning of the word mellow. I've learned to crack the door of the room he's in open and wait for him to stop bouncing off the walls before proceeding. I waited until all was quiet, and as soon as I opened the door just wide enough to get my body through I was punched in the gut with a Cooper Hawk body slam.



I'm thinking a very releasable bird, that one. Unlike, of course, this one.



Chubby little Brigitte here is an imprint. He (yes he - at least that's the current guess. Obviously there have been different guesses in the past.) had just had a squabble with his brother, and went crying and squalling over to Diva there for consolation. It's always something with Brigitte. The dynamic between the three Great Horned Owls really seems to have de-Diva-ed Diva, too. He's so mellow now, and seems really happy in there. He was totally cool with Brigitte coming over... almost as if he were used to it...

...I get the feeling I'm calling the wrong owl "diva".

Last but far from least, a brand new Dove. You can never have enough Doves.