Just south of Lake Walton on the Dutchess Rail Trail, I encountered a barred owl with wings spread around something yummy in its talons (clicky for more dots):

MAH00389-0548 – Barred Owl on DCRT – 1

The owl acquired weapons lock on me, just in case I might try to steal its fresh-killed meal:

MAH00389-0548 – Barred Owl on DCRT – 2

My neck doesn’t turn nearly that far, so I lost the staring contest:

MAH00389-0548 – Barred Owl on DCRT – 3

Owls being good folks to have around, we wish ’em well: may they raise many owlets!

The pictures were extracted from the Sony HDR-AS30V helmet camera with this incantation:

avconv -ss 00:05:30 -i /mnt/video/2015-05-15/MAH00389.MP4 -t 20 -f image2 -q 1 Image-%04d.jpg

The -q 1 parameter should produce an image with the same dots as the original, but that really doesn’t mean much in the face of the camera’s relentless video compression.

Here’s a dot-for-dot crop (at 100% JPEG quality = uncompressed) showing the tradeoff between wide field-of-view, detail, and compression:

MAH00389-0548 – Barred Owl on DCRT – 2 – detail

Makes me appreciate my eyesight: I spotted that owl when it covered just a few image pixels. Of course, at first I thought somebody dropped a hoodie on the trail, then maybe it was a chunk of debris, so I eased off the asphalt onto the gravel Just In Case.