[ birds chirping and geese honking ]
- The alarm went off at 4:00 a.m. this morning.
You've got to get up early to find a great grey.
And I've never not wanted to get up to find a great grey.
I love hearing those woodpeckers hammering and the doves calling.
It's just the sound of springtime out in the forest.
It's awesome.
IAN MCCLUSKEY: Ken Shults is on a quest.
Today he returns to a place he has been coming
week after week, month after month, year after year.
He's on a search to find one of the most elusive birds
in America, the great grey owl.
Ken knows that there are at least a couple owls here.
As an amateur wildlife photographer,
he's taken some amazing shots of them before.
I think these birds are made of half magic and half mystery.
They can disappear into a forest like they were made of smoke.
I've seen these birds fly into stuff
that I couldn't walk through.
In seconds, they're just gone.
You can't follow them for 10 yards.
They're just poof, gone.
[ camera shutter clicks ]
The great grey owls have been called
"the ghosts of the forest."
And their scientific name, Strix nebulosa,
comes from the Latin, meaning misty, foggy, or obscure.
Seeing one is incredibly rare.
There are only about 1,000 grey owls in Oregon.
After five years of searching,
Ken has probably seen less than a dozen,
and he's discovered only one nest.
Today, he's hoping his persistence might pay off.
It's a big bird, but it's a much bigger forest.
It's hard. [ chuckles ]
This is where we just kind of -- like an owl divining rod.
Dgg-dgg-dgg.
I think this way.
Let's check the big meadow first.
This is what the male call would be like.
[ imitates owl hoot ]
So keep your ears open for that.
It's been a few hours, and so far,
no owls and no signs of a nest.
Finding great grey owls requires intense focus.
So part of the trick is to train your brain
to not see the tree.
You're looking for everything that's not tree.
We're looking for, you know, any little movement,
if he's turning in there,
and looking for those silhouettes.
There it is.
We got him.
Did you see it?
Just not sure which tree it went into.
There it is.
We got a great grey owl, my friends.
It's amazing how much they look like the tree.
[ shutter clicks ]
Ah, look at him.
When you find one, every single time, for me,
it's just like, ah!
Through his photography, he's been able to watch
the great greys in the wild like few people ever have.
In doing so, he's learned a lot about these majestic owls.
[ owl hoots ]
The great grey owl is the tallest owl in North America.
So he stands about 30 inches tall.
Even though it's huge -- it's got a 5-foot wingspan --
it only weighs 2.5 pounds.
So it allows it to fly really, really slow,
like almost like a hovercraft as it floats
and then plunges out of the sky onto its prey.
The great grey is phenomenal in how it hears its prey.
Its face is shaped like a radar dish
for the purpose of collecting sound
and bringing it to its ears, which are actually
asymmetrically located in its head.
And that's so that the soundwaves
arrive at slightly different times to each ear,
which allows it to triangulate
with absolutely extraordinary accuracy.
As you watch them, you see that head swiveling
like a radar dish and locking on
as they zero in on a sound in the grass.
I've seen them fly 30, 40 yards and drop onto a vole
and hit it, from hearing it 30-40 yards away.
I've seen them do that
when the vole was 6 inches, 12 inches under snow.
I tend to like to keep my distance
out of respect for the birds
and wanting to see them acting naturally.
I don't want to watch them reacting to me.
I'm certainly not going to intervene in any way
to try to get the owl to do something.
What I'm trying to do is kind of capture the scene.
Like, what was going on? What's the story?
What is it like to be this owl?
Over the past five years,
he's taken some 20,000 photos of great greys.
Now he's trying to take his photography a step further
into fine art prints.
And of course, he didn't pick an easy way.
I've been experimenting
with taking some of my absolute favorite images
and doing some prints in this kind of old school,
hand-processed method from the late 1800s
and working with a master in that process.
I think I might be onto something.
Ken has been circling the woods since sunrise,
and now it's getting late.
He has found only one owl,
but he still hasn't found any signs of a nest.
He scans each nook and hollow of the trees.
Not suitable.
Doesn't look flat enough up there.
Great greys, like other owls, don't build nests.
So a nest doesn't really look like a nest --
it might be the broken top of a tree --
so it makes it that much harder to find one.
Finding a nest is the only way to see a mother interacting
with her young and a chance to photograph
what very, very few people have ever seen.
Ken is about to lose light for shooting,
and it's looking like he's going to have to accept
another day searching in vain.
But then, something in the treetop catches his attention.
Man, there's a nest up there, about 50 feet up.
That's typical for a great grey owl nest.
We got to try and get an angle to be able to see that.
Oh, my god.
Wow.
She's in the nest.
Oh, man, finally!
[ exhales ]
[ sighs ]
Oh, my god.
Wow.
You can just see the top of her head
popping up over the edge of the nest.
[ sighs ]
Last year I walked in 4 feet of snow in this forest
in snowshoes for months.
A hundred miles, 200 hours, you know,
just ludicrous amount of time and never found the nest.
And I knew it had to be here somewhere.
It had to, you know?
[ owl hooting ]
And to finally see in that moment, she's on a nest.
Like, this is... [ gasps ]
[ owl hooting ]
Now I have this obligation.
Like, I know where these guys live.
They're very sensitive.
There are very few of them.
There's a responsibility to protect them.
Ken will continue to share his love of great grey owls
through his photography.
But their location he will keep as their secret.
The moon is up.
Time for Ken to go home
and for the great grey owls to reclaim the night.