A Day With the Burrowing Owls — 10 September 2026

Some clients arrive with a list. Cameron Carstens arrived with a species. A photographer working out of Lima for a few days, he wanted one thing from us: a full day with Burrowing Owls, close enough and long enough to come away with pictures rather than records. So that is what the day was — no transect, no tally, no rushing on to the next thing because the light had gone flat.

Burrowing Owls make that kind of day possible in a way almost nothing else does. They are out in daylight, they live on the ground rather than above it, and they hold territory in open country where you can see a bird from a long way off and plan your approach instead of stumbling into it. We worked two lomas in the Lurín valley south of the city — Lomas de Lúcumo and Lomas de Pachacámac — reading the ground for the low mounds and burrow entrances the birds use as sentry posts, then getting low, properly low, elbows in the dust. An owl photographed from standing height is an owl photographed from above, and it always looks it.

The last stop was Pantanos de Villa, and a pair that has held the same patch there for years. Birds that know the rhythm of people nearby behave differently from birds that do not: they let you settle, and once you have settled they get on with their morning. That is the difference a resident pair makes, and it is the sort of thing you only know to build a day around if you have spent years watching the same places.

That is what a custom tour is for. Not a shorter version of a catalogue itinerary — a day shaped around what you actually came to do. See Cameron's work at @cam.frames on Instagram.