After decades of photographing wildlife, Pete Arnold of Cheyenne was trying to figure out how to catch birds in their best moments — without having to sit for hours.
“It’s kind of a drag to sit there and wait” for perfect picture, he told Cowboy State Daily.
Then it occurred to him — why not let a GoPro camera do the waiting for him?
The Perfect Shot
A few years ago, he started putting a GoPro on a tripod by roadkill big game carcasses near Pinedale. The carcasses are a magnet for raptors and other birds.
He’d set the camera on “time lapse” to take a photo every few seconds and leave it there for hours at a time.
Then he’d download the photos and painstakingly sift through them, searching for the rare jewels among the thousands of images.
He replicated that process near burrowing owl holes on the eastern edge of Cheyenne and struck pure gold on June 28. Turns out, these tiny owls are awesome at selfies.
Among the countless frames was one perfect image.
An owl is seen staring directly at the camera, with one of its eyes clearly visible at close range.
Behind it is a second owl, its head cocked at an odd angle as if it’s trying to figure out what’s going on. And in the background is a third owl, captured in mid-flight and in focus.
Arnold was thrilled and excited to see such a masterpiece. The tiny burrowing owls are among his favorite birds to photograph, so seeing a once-in-a-lifetime image of them got his adrenaline going.
“They’re willing to come out of their burrows and perform for you,” he said.
Arnold also appreciates his wife for putting up with his lengthy sessions of shifting through the seemingly endless GoPro images to find rare treasures like the burrowing owls photo.
“I have to credit my patient wife of 50 years,” he said.
A burrowing owl and its young hang out by their burrow near Pinedale, in this image captured by wildlife photographer Pete Arnold. (Courtesy Peter G. Arnold) 
Burrowing Owls check out a GoPro camera, set up by Pete Arnold to capture time-lapse photos of the birds. (Courtesy Peter G. Arnold) 
Wildlife photographer Pete Arnold uses a GoPro camera, set to take pictures every few seconds, to capture images like this one – an eagle and magpie perched together on a big game carcass near Pinedale. (Courtesy Peter G. Arnold) 
It took almost 4,000 time-lapse shots with a GoPro camera for Pete Arnold of Cheyenne to capture this image of a Eurasian collared dove. (Courtesy Peter G. Arnold)
An Abiding Love For Wildlife
Arnold has been an avid amateur photographer for 50 years. He’s active in the Audubon Society, and is endlessly fascinated with Wyoming’s many birds.
He’s had photos published in Wyoming’s Wildlife photo contests. Two of his photos will be featured in the Wyoming Wildlife 2025 calendar.
He’s also done some work in sports, photographing basketball games for the University of Wyoming.
The photo of the owls is one of his favorite shots ever, and the owls themselves are amazing creatures, Arnold said.
Unlike other owl species, burrowing owls can be active during the day, he said. They can dig their own burrows, but prefer to occupy holes already dug by ground squirrels and prairie dogs.
Arnold helped the Wyoming Game and Fish Department study the owls. Some of the birds were captured, outfitted with telemetry tracking devices and set free so biologists could track their migrations.
4,500-Mile Round Trip
What researchers found out about the burrowing owls was amazing, avian expert Andrea Orabona of Lander told Cowboy State Daily.
Now retired, she was the Game and Fish statewide nongame bird biologist. She and Arnold worked together on burrowing owl studies from 2019-2022.
One female burrowing owl was trapped on private land near Gillette, outfitted with a tracking device and set free again.
“She spent the winter northeast of Acapulco, Mexico, and flew right back to her nesting area near Gillette,” Orabona said.
“That was a 4,500-mile round-trip migration,” she added. “This is a bird that is 10 inches tall — and a lot of those inches are legs — and weighs about half a pound.”
Burrowing owls from Wyoming, Montana, Canada and elsewhere in the region winter in Mexico, Baja, California and other warm places.
They typically start heading south in mid-October and return back north in April or May.
Many owls make a stopover in Lubbock, Texas, she said. That’s because the city has lots of prairie dog holes, culverts and other places for the owls to take shelter and rest.
Burrowing owls classified as a “species of greatest conservation need” in Wyoming, Orabona said. That’s because they’re faced with habitat loss as prairie dog towns shrink.
Even in retirement, she continues to study burrowing owls, including ongoing research near Billings, Montana.
In Wyoming, burrowing owls can be found just about anywhere there’s prairie dog holes, Orabona said. Some hot spots included near Pinedale, the southern Red Desert and Thunder Basin National Grasslands.
Now that he’s got that perfect shot with his GoPro, there’s only one thing left for Arnold to do. Set it up again.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
