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Kurt Wecker knew there were Burrowing Owls at Brian Piccolo Park in Cooper City, Florida, but it took three days of searching before he finally spotted any of the petite, robin-sized raptors.

True to its name, the Burrowing Owl nests in underground holes. "The owls would pop up and look around and go back under," Wecker says. Once he'd scoped out a nest, the patient photographer lay flat on the ground for 20 minutes, waiting for one to emerge. "The image you see is the only frame I captured, since this happened so quickly," he says.

This image was a Top 100 photo from the 2012 Ô¼ÅÚÊÓƵ Magazine Photography Awards. To see all of the photos, click .