From Joshua N Wiley

Haunting.

My signature shot as a wildlife photographer is of Snowy Owl in a fir tree lined up with the rising full moon. It’s been one of my most popular images. So I try not to miss any opportunity to line up birds with the moon. Especially owls. It’s become a bit of a personal project for me.

While in Alligator River last Friday night, I spotted a Great Horned Owl perching from a dead tree after nightfall. Then I saw the first quarter moon. Then I put two and two together.

The owl was actually too close for the shot to work at f/11, because the owl basically covered the entire half moon. But at f/4, the moon swelled a little bit in bokeh, and the owl fit inside its out-of-focus glow.

8/29/25

Nikon Z9, 600 mm, 600 mm, f/4, ISO 2000, 1/100 second.

Dare County, North Carolina

    • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
      7·
      13 days ago

      Thank you! I try to keep the community living up to its name.

      Do you have a favorite owl or type of photo? I’m always curious what gets people interested.

        • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
          4·
          13 days ago

          Oh good! I come across some like this and wonder if people will like it even if it’s not actually showing the owl. I’ll keep my eyes out for some more then!

    • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
      4·
      13 days ago

      Lol speaking of attention to detail, I was looking at the photo and thought it looked more GHO than a Snowy, and they were talking about a different but similar photo they took of a Snowy in a tree, but this photo was indeed a GHO. I’ve now fixed the title. 😖

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
        2·
        12 days ago

        Pff fkin Lemmy didn’t load the update for me or smth.

        I loaded into the post just a few minutes ago on Sync on Android, and while this comment of you saying you’ve edited the title is 4 hours old and now the title reads as the fixed one, from my explore/all feed it was still the snowy owl.

        So I wrote

        While the photo is gorgeous, I’m pretty certain that’s not a snowy owl?

        1. Snowy owls are white, and despite the low light, I think this one is brownish

        2. Snowy owls have a round head, no ears, whereas this one seems to have quite prominent ones.

        Leading me to believe it’s more like an American horned owl, or even an eagle-owl, but not really, as the ears aren’t that prominent and it doesn’t seem that big overall.

        • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
          1·
          12 days ago

          I usually chalk it up to federation issues, but you’re on .World too, so that doesn’t explain it. I just tell myself quirks are part of the Lemmy charm.

          Your points were the 2 that also caught my attention as I started to reach useful levels of consciousness.

          Buuuuut! A minor thing, Snowies doooo have plumicorns! Teeny weenie ones, even smaller than a Short Eared Owl, but they exist. We just usually don’t see them, and they certainly wouldn’t be visible in this pic. But here’s some where they are.

          • Dasus@lemmy.world
            2·
            12 days ago

            I think it’s sync, sometimes it just doesn’t refresh the feed that I’ve loaded a couple hours ago as I’ve just browsed the same feed without having refreshed it. No need with how slow lemmy is.

            Alright yeah, seems they do. Nice observation.

            But yeah not as prominent as ones in the picture.

            Thanks the pics