Houston Neighborhood Walk - Greater Horned Owl Bookmark

With a potentially tall and narrow subject such as this, naturally a bookmark was in the works.  With this shot, cropped in as close as it was, I decided that the white areas of the sky in the background were distracting, so grabbed a photo from a 2006 vacation in Colorado to tone it down a little.  Thus, what you are seeing here is the bird in Houston with a pathway view from Horsetooth Mountain in the background.

But that's not all that was done.  The owl's eyes were almost all-the-way closed the entire time I was there, with the exception of one shot taken after I'd made enough noise to draw its curiosity (without scaring it away).  The open eyes from that picture were pasted into this one - as well as the pics that will be featured in the next couple of posts.  It was a labor of love.

Original of the owl below, as well as the original picture taken at Horsetooth just outside Fort Collins, Colorado, in June of 2006: