The Burrowing Owls Have Once Again Returned To Promontory Mountain For The Summer

Each summer, I look forward to doing a little bird watching and photography with the quirky little burrowing owls.

Antelope Island State Park is the most well-known location to find burrowing owls in northern Utah but it’s not the best, at least in my opinion that is.

And the reason for that is simple, the burrowing owls on Antelope Island are usually too far away for really good photographs.

That leads to people oftentimes trying to get closer to the owls and getting much too close to the nesting site.

I have seen it more times than I can remember, people getting out of their vehicles and walking right up to a nest like it is no big deal.

This is the downside to public land, people take far too many liberties during nesting season because it is, well, public land.

This is why I prefer to take the time and drive to Promontory Mountain to watch and photograph the burrowing owl.

All the owls are on private land in this particular location but in certain places the burrowing owls will come and sit on the roadside fence posts during morning and evening hours, making for some fantastic photographs and viewing opportunities without ever leaving the roadway or even the vehicle.

I took a drive to Promontory Mountain a couple days ago for a short burrowing owl bird watching trip and came across 5 pairs of burrowing owls and two of the pairs were very easily observed and photographed from the vehicle, resulting in all the images for this blog post, in fact.

I was also treated to a couple of short-eared owls on the wing which, unfortunately, never gave me an opportunity for a photograph but they were fun to watch nevertheless.

I already posted a previous blog post about finding and photographing the burrowing owl on Promontory Mountain so head on over to that particular post if you are not familiar with this location.

It is a bit of a drive and is in a fairly remote portion of Box Elder County but it is the best location to find and photograph burrowing owls I have found so far.

But keep in mind that all the owls are on private property so please respect the landowner and keep to the public right-of-way.

Other birds such as horned larks, lark sparrows, long-billed curlews, western meadowlarks, short-eared owls, and Swainson hawks, for just a few examples, are some of the other species of birds that can be seen during a trip to find the burrowing owls.

The burrowing owls are most active early morning and late evening, usually about an hour or so before the sun sets, which makes the owls much easier to find when they are actively perched on the fence posts hunting.

During the middle of the day, burrowing owls will sit on the ground near the nest site and are quite hard to spot and not very active so I almost never look for them outside of the late hours of the evening.

I hope this helps anyone looking for a place to find and photograph burrowing owls.

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(Burrowing Owls On Promontory Mountain.
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