A Cape Eagle Owl (Bubo capensis) perches with its head effortlessly rotated through 180 degrees.
During my travels through South Africa, I visited Hluhluwe (pronounced; Shesh shlewee) Game Reserve in the Kwazulu-Natal region. This game reserve and the adjoining Imfolozi Reserve are said to have the highest density of wildlife of any of the reserves in South Africa.
**** Updated 18.11.16. When originally published, I identified this bird as a “Great Spotted Owl”. With further research, I now believe it’s actually the Cape Eagle Owl as per the title. If this is incorrect, I’m happy to be corrected. The original capture was with the 500mm F4.0 telephoto lens on a Canon 20D with its 1.6x crop factor giving an equivalent angle of view as 800mm on a full-frame camera. The image was underexposed in-camera (not intentionally!) which needed to be corrected in post-processing. Also in processing, a distracting twig was carefully cloned out and the file taken into Nik Software (now Google) Color Efex Pro where a “detail extractor” filter was selectively applied. **** ~KD