Kelley Luikey was with a group of photographers when something shocking happened. A great gray owl that the group was observing landed on one of the photographer’s cameras—in fact, it was Tyler Grudowski’s camera. Luikey captured the moment using her own camera, and she posted the series of photos on Facebook.
“A departure from my normal post, this one has a human in it!” Luikey wrote in her Facebook post. “It was so much fun to watch this scene unfold as we all stood there in complete disbelief. I’ll forever be jealous of @tcgnaturephotography but this Great Gray could not have picked a nicer human’s camera to land on for a brief moment. Yay Tyler!!!”
The post blew up online, and, inevitably, Luikey ended up fielding some hate comments suggesting the group was baiting the owl to entice it to come closer. Luikey updated her original post to set the record straight.
“I do not condone baiting owls in any way shape or form. Period,” Luikey wrote in her updated post. “[I’ve] never have been a part of anything like that and never will. That was absolutely not happening on this day or any day I was there. [. . .] It was an exciting and very brief encounter that was full of joy. The owl landed for maybe 3 seconds before it flew off and resumed hunting. This behavior was not observed on subsequent days.”
See an owl land on a photographer’s camera here: