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From Henrik Nilsson

As the light fades for the day, a snowy owl spots something in the distance.

This is an older image that I recently dug up. Snowy owls are rare visitors to where I live (southwestern British Columbia, Canada). When they do arrive in numbers, it's known as an irruption year.

British Columbia, Canada.

Canon 7D with Canon 500mm f4. 1/400 sec, ISO 400, f4. Manual mode. Feb 2012.

From Ginger Barger

Came across this juvenile barred owl sunbathing the middle of the road! Barred owls are so unconcerned with humans. This owl just sat there for a few minutes, looking at us, before leisurely getting up and flying to a nearby branch to perch.

From Middle TN Raptor Center

Photos like these hardly look real, but this one is, and it was taken just a few minutes ago at feeding time. This big female GHO is on the mend and about ready to get back to the wild. She came to us from the Woodbury area suffering from secondary poisoning back on July 12th. What a difference eight days of supportive care has made!

What she's doing here is called a deimatic display. She's trying to frighten me away by making herself look bigger than she is and not worth attacking. What you can't hear in this photo is the hissing and beak clapping warnings. This is a good thing to see for a rehabber. We want that fear of humans to remain strong while we have them so they stay wild when released. She's been outside regaining flight strength for two days now, so she won't need much longer with us before back to the forest she goes!

Animal defenses can be diematic (from the Greek deimatόo, meaning "to frighten") or aposematic (from the Greek apo, "away" and sēma, "sign").

Diematic displays are something done to surprise a predator to momentarily distract them so the prey can escape. The owl rapidly puffing up and making sharp noises, or an octopus changing colors and squirting ink are diematic behaviors. They offer no actual defensive capability, but their sudden appearance offers a chance to get away.

Aposematic displays are warning signs that tell a predator there is an actual danger present. Brightly colored frogs are highly poisonous, so animals learn to avoid eating them. Animals like certain insects or opossums can emit very foul smelling secretions, making themselves into something the predator would not want to eat.

Some displays serve both functions, like the rattle of a rattlesnake. The sudden sharp sound can help them avoid being trampled or startle away a would-be predator, but to experienced predators, it is also aposematic, as it indicates the snake has a deadly bite.

From Michael Davis

Probably my favorite from the Osprey yesterday! The fierce look as it holds down its prey shows the determination of one the most overlooked birds of prey out there.

Ospreys, or "fish hawks," are supreme aquatic hunters with a diet consisting of 99% live fish. They boast a remarkable success rate, capturing fish on up to three-quarters of their dives. This is made possible by specialized, razor-sharp talons and reversible outer toes that grip slippery prey!

From Jen Marie

This was a scene I'd wanted to capture for a very long time - a great-horned owl nesting in a saguaro cactus.

The hot sun was beating down, and as I watched her position herself to take the most advantage of the breeze, I noticed what I like to call the baby owl wiggle. Even though all the passersby didn't know of any babies yet, I could see movement under her wings. I waited a bit, and sure enough, a little one popped out for a few seconds, took a big yawn, then went back under mom for protection from the sun.

From Alex Han

Buffy Fish Owl 马来渔鸭

"Third Eye Mode On "

"Daddy Buffy" ruffles its feathers to clean them, revealing its nictitating membrane-a translucent third eyelid that slides horizontally.

This "third eye" blinks across its bright yellow eyes to protect and moisten them."

#SonyA1ii

#SonyGM300MM

Location: Hampstead Wetlands Park July 26

From Héctor Segura

Great Grey Owlets (Strix Nebulosa) in the darkness of the beautiful forest of the beautiful British Columbia, Canada.

From Scott's Photography Advebttures

Managed to find 27 deer this morning before 730am. Only 2 bucks, but 1 was this brute. This mighty buck was 11 points last season but is past prime now, being probably at least 7 years old.

This awesome animal... the "King" has one of his subjects; a red-winged blackbird, cleaning ticks off his nibs! If you look closely at his right antler just below the brow tine (left of bird), you'll see a spot of blood where the bird pulled and ate a tick from the velvet. Nature is amazing!

From Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital

Today we are reminded that kindness is measured not by grand gestures, but by the willingness to act when someone - or something - needs us most. This is our Mandela Day story.

Yesterday, the spirit of Mandela Day came alive in the rescue of Percival, a Temminck's pangolin, whose future hung in the balance after being recovered during sting operation by the Malmesbury Stock Theft Unit.

When the call came, CapeNature Environmental Management Inspector Asgar Vahed did not hesitate. Despite being on leave, he immediately put aside his own plans and sprang into action. Guided by the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital team, he did everything possible to keep the frightened little pangolin comfortable while searching for a veterinarian willing to attempt emergency stabilisation.

Dr Lynne Klug could never have expected that someone would arrive at her practice carrying one of the world's rarest and most trafficked mammals. Yet, without hesitation, she accepted the challenge. Working hand- in-hand with the JWVH veterinary team, she provided the emergency treatment that gave Percival a chance to keep fighting.

Twelve anxious hours later, after a sleepless night for everyone involved, it became clear that Percival needed specialist care without delay. Once again, extraordinary people stepped forward. Our incredible partners Airlink and Impact for Wildlife answered the call, making it possible for Asgar and Percival to touch down safely in Johannesburg just hours later, where the next chapter of his fight for survival could begin.

Nelson Mandela believed that our humanity is reflected in how we treat one another, but his compassion also extended to the natural world. He understood that protecting our environment and the remarkable creatures with whom we share it is part of building a kinder, more just society.

Yesterday was a powerful reminder of that legacy.

A law enforcement officer gave up his leave. A veterinarian embraced an unexpected challenge. Long- awaited plans were abandoned. Pilots, airline staff, conservationists, wildlife veterinarians and countless others each contributed their time, expertise and compassion. None of them asked what they would gain. They simply asked, "What can I do to help?"

That is the true spirit of Mandela Day.

Changing the world is not always about doing something extraordinary. Sometimes it is about ordinary people choosing to care, stepping forward when it would be easier to step back, and working together to give hope where there was little.

For one of the world's most threatened mammals, that collective compassion may be the difference between extinction and survival - one rescued pangolin at a time.

David Johnson with a pair of young Eurasian eagle-owls being banded in the field.

I know we've covered the work done at the decommissioned Umitilla military base about half a dozen times. The Burrowing Owl recovery work there has been nothing short of amazing.

That is just one of Mr. Johnson's great efforts to help the other of the world. His passing is a great loss to the owl community.

Take some time to read the following about his lifetime of dedication to owl conservation.

From Washington Post

When he was 11, David Johnson grabbed his backpack and set out for a camping trip on the Blue Earth River, not far from his family's home in southern Minnesota. Sitting alone in the moonlight that evening, he was amazed to see an Eastern screech owl land on the corner of his canvas pup tent, inches from his face.

"It called for a good 20 minutes,” Mr. Johnson later said, recalling how he was close enough to see the bird vibrate as it whinnied and trilled. The owl could have landed on any tree along the river, he realized, but had chosen his tent.

As he put it years later, "I didn't pick owls, they picked me."

A bespectacled, wide-eyed scientist who came to resemble the birds he so loved, Mr. Johnson dedicated the rest of his life to working with owls, studying their behavior and working to safeguard their habitat. He helped save a threatened population of burrowing owls at a former Army chemical depot in Oregon, worked to protect spotted owls from loggers in the Pacific Northwest, and mentored scientists around the world while serving as the founder of the Global Owl Project, which has connected some 450 researchers across 65 countries.

"There are two important days in your life, the day that you're born and the day you find out why," he told journalist Chris Morgan, host of the KUOW podcast "The Wild." "I know why I was born - for the owls. So I'm going to work with owls until my very last breath."

Mr. Johnson with a spectacled owl at an event in Belize in 2016.

Mr. Johnson, who was known to friends and colleagues as "DJ," kept going even after he was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer in 2022. He was still fielding questions from colleagues and preparing his latest book, about owls and their place in global myth and culture - as symbols of wisdom or as harbingers of death - until his death of cancer on June 15, at age 69.

"The man needed five lives to accomplish everything he wanted to accomplish,” said his wife, Shari Schaftlein, recalling how Mr. Johnson sought to continue working even as he underwent dozens of chemotherapy treatments. He was guided, she said, partly by memories of a canoeing trip he took as a young man, when his outboard motor died as he traveled a piranha-filled stretch of the Rio Napo, a tributary of the Amazon.

"He had this epiphany: 'Boy, am I living now.' He started using this saying, that he 'had a near-life experience,' and wanted to emulate that for the rest of his life. He looked at it as, 'When will this moment ever get to happen again?

Among owl researchers, Mr. Johnson was known as an unusually warm and energetic connector, bringing scientists and conservationists together at international owl conferences and offering tips and encouragement through a continual stream of emails and WhatsApp messages. Many of his mailings ended with a cheery sign-off - "Strigilogically yours, David" - that nodded to strigiformes, the taxonomic order to which owls belong.

“The owl world is pretty small, and most people know each other. David probably knew every single one of them - his fingers were in everything all over the planet," said Karla Bloem, executive director of the International Owl Center in Houston, Minnesota. Mr. Johnson pushed her to conduct research on great horned owl vocalizations, she said, and went on to help her launch the World Owl Hall of Fame awards, designing and crafting the wooden prizes himself. He received one of the group's top honors, the Champion of Owls prize, in 2010.

"He was extremely good at encouraging people to do things, and then providing them with the connections and resources to do it," Bloem said.

As a scientist, Mr. Johnson was widely acclaimed for his work on burrowing owls, a species of yellow-eyed, long-legged birds that make their homes underground, in abandoned burrows created by prairie dogs, badgers and other animals. "Much of what we know about these owls, we know from his research," science writer Jennifer Ackerman observed in her 2023 book, "What an Owl Knows."

Mr. Johnson conducted the majority of his burrowing owl work at an unlikely setting, the now-defunct Umatilla Army Depot in northern Oregon. Once a storage site for sarin gas and other chemical weapons, the depot became a haven for wildlife, only for an ecological crisis to unfold after the Army began trapping coyotes while seeking to protect the local pronghorn population. Badgers were trapped along with the coyotes. And as the badgers disappeared, burrowing owls found that they had few burrows to nest in.

The military turned to Mr. Johnson in 2007, enlisting him in a rescue effort on behalf of the owls. Using 55-gallon barrels and lengths of PVC tubing, he and his team built a network of 96 artificial burrows, designed to be accessible to researchers. When the project began, there were only three or four nesting pairs at the depot. Within a year, there were nine, and by 2021 "it was a packed house," with 65 nesting pairs at the depot, Mr, Johnson said.

Mr. Johnson designed and built artificial burrows to help preserve the owl population at the former Umatilla Army Depot in Oregon.

Mr. Johnson banded each owl at the site and equipped some of the birds with tiny, ultralightweight backpacks that contained geolocators, allowing his team to track their migration patterns. "Thank you for your contribution to science," he would tell the birds, almost in a whisper, before releasing them back into the wild.

"The length of time that he's been able to study these banded birds allows us to look at multiple generations of birds in a way that I don't think any other researcher has been able to do," said Michael Green, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Northwest migratory birds program, in a 2025 interview with the Oregonian. "It gives us a new perspective on birds in general."

Mr. Johnson bands a juvenile burrowing owl in eastern Washington state in 2020.

As his health declined, Mr. Johnson stepped away from the depot project, turning his work over to groups including the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

One of the researchers who is continuing the study, Matt Poole, was 17 when he met Mr. Johnson at a low moment during the coronavirus pandemic. "I wasn't doing great mentally," Poole said, recalling how Mr. Johnson offered guidance and support. "His consensus was, 'The owls will get you through this. Trust in the owls.' That's what I did, and sure enough it worked."

"Owls," Poole marveled, "they're a special animal."

A Notable Life

This article is part of A Notable Life, an obituary feature telling the stories of remarkable people every Saturday.

The younger of two children, David Harold Johnson was born in Mankato, Minnesota, on Sept. 10, 1956. He grew up on a family farm, helping his father and uncle harvest corn and soybeans. Tinkering with farm machinery gave him an affinity for engineering and woodworking, which grew over the years as he began building his own wooden canoes and kayaks, using them to hunt for crabs while paddling around the bay near his home in Olympia, Washington.

Mr. Johnson studied at community colleges in Mankato and Brainerd, earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Bemidji State University in Minnesota and received a master's in wildlife science from Oregon State University in 1993. By then he was working as the spotted owl coordinator for the state of Oregon, leading a team of "hooters," as the field technicians were known. At the time, environmental activists were rallying around the bird, campaigning against logging practices that threatened the old-growth forests where the owls lived.

Within a few years, Mr. Johnson had moved to Washington state's Department of Fish and Wildlife, where he built on his owl research while studying habitats in the region. He went on to help identify and preserve Indigenous burial sites; work with an Olympia nonprofit restoring a historic tugboat, the Sand Man; and travel to Kamchatka, in the Russian Far East, as part of a scientific exchange program.

After his wife got an environmental policy job in the federal government in the mid-2000s, she and Mr. Johnson moved to Alexandria, Virginia, where he launched the Global Owl Project at a time when he was cutting back on field work. He had been diagnosed with chronic fatigue, his wife said, but was not without energy: Each summer, he would drive his blue Tacoma pickup to the Umatilla depot and back, stopping at his family farm in Minnesota along the way.

In recent years, he and his wife lived in Olympia, where he died. Survivors include his mother, Ann (Schweim) Johnson.

"I wish I could do as much as I could for everything on Earth; I can't," Mr. Johnson told CBS News after his cancer diagnosis. "What I can do is, I can help owls."

As part of that effort, he traveled to Aruba in December 2024 for his last project in the field, setting up artificial burrows for a population of burrowing owls.

"He keeps on living in the owls,” said his friend Dries Van Nieuwenhuyse, a Belgian scientist who accompanied him on the trip.

From Owl Ridge Raptor Center

All of the birds are molting right now.

They molt once a year and they get itchy and crabby.

Well, Beak usually looks a little crabby being a Great Horned Owl and all.

Beak's eyelids have tiny new feathers coming in as you can see here.

You can also see his nictitating membranes very well in this photo.

"Nature's windshield wipers", they keep his eyes free of debris and moist.

From Wild Wings Inc

Short eared owls are considered nomadic breeders. Instead of returning to the same nesting territory every year, they often choose breeding sites based on where vole populations are highest, making their nesting locations change from year to year.