Female Great Horned Owl at Nest

WOW! Surprising, astonishing, gaze-stopping. A superlative composition, especially for the disguise of the tonal range. If I could go beyond qualifying this as exceptional, I would, but I rather leave it at that and enjoy looking at it for a while, savoring this truly magnificent, spontaneous, well-conceived photograph.

DG

Under the watchful eye. Splendid.

Great shot, not easy to find and nailed it perfectly

Thanks, everyone. I was lucky to get even lighting late in the day for this photo. I usually don't photograph this nest so early in the season, but was checking on its progress with some friends. At first I thought nothing was happening, but I walked around a bit to check different angles and saw the eye. I had to take a lot of photos to get the eye in focus using my 400mm F4 hand-held (it would have been much easier with a tripod).