Is it a Snowy? ... no, it isn't ... yes, it is!

After nine days at home, making sure my stitches from minor surgery healed properly, an invitation by friends Cathy and Terry to go birding the day before yesterday (7 March 2014) was welcomed with open arms - as it always is! What a great day we had, searching SE of the city, and finding some really neat birds. Most were impossible to photograph because of distance, but also because we had "heat wave" distortion all day long, making it difficult to get photos that were sharp. It was one of THOSE amazing days, out of the house from 7:15 a.m. till about 8:15 in the evening. By the end of the day, we had seen a total owl count of 19, from three species - 8 Short-eared Owls, 8 Snowy Owls, 2 Great Horned Owls and one mystery owl. We couldn't decide if the latter was a Snowy Owl or a Short-eared Owl, as it was perched on top of a metal silo, way off in the distance. In fact, this silo can be seen in my next image - the coloured spots from the sunburst leading ones eye to it. We missed a good photo opp with one of the Short-eared Owls, when we were pulled over, further down the road than several other photographers. We did see one down on the ground near the edge of the road in a different place, hiding in the dried grasses, but, again, my photo is blurry.

The Snowy Owl in the photo above was the closest Snowy we saw. We were driving past a small backroad that had been cleared and, like all the roads, had snowbanks along both sides. These are very uneven, with all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes on the top. Just past the entrance to this road, I looked back slightly and wondered if one of the shapes was in fact an owl. We decided to turn back and check it out, just in case. Sure enough, there was this beautiful, pure white male! Funny, I had even jokingly said that we should find a couple of black pebbles or bits of wood and add it to the snow shape - and then we realized that this "snowman" shape had eyes of its very own, ha!

Also saw a Gyrfalcon and lots of Horned Larks - the latter constantly in flight or down on the road ahead of us. The "heat wave" distortion made it impossible to get anything but rather blurry shots of these, but I might be able to slightly improve one of them enough to post later.

As you will no doubt agree, it was an amazing day! Thanks so much, Cathy and Terry, for another rewarding day (which had started off rather slowly down in that area). Lots of fun!

Wow, it's supposed to get up to 14C this afternoon! Meanwhile, it is 10C. Temperatures for this coming week are expected to be between +4C and +10C. The following week, the forecast so far is for temperatures just above 0C - with snow.