A different angle.jpg

It's a miracle that I'm posting anything today, lol! What a nightmare getting my photos on to my "new" computer. I did eventually find them - I was puzzled by the fact that so much space was taken up on my new computer, yet there was no sign at all of my photos, other than about a dozen that were in My Pictures folder. After hours of trying one thing or another, I eventually discovered everything in a folder that was inside another folder. A "black screen of death" was not what I wanted to see, either, ha! One thing after another decided that it needed to update on this new machine - and I eventually fell into bed, exhausted, just before 4:00 a.m. this morning, lol. The only reason that I am posting my "daily three" is that I had edited them on my old computer the other day. The thing that puzzles me now, is why is my new computer much slower than the old one, despite having tons of memory??

After nine days at home, giving my 16 stitches from minor surgery a chance to start healing properly, an invitation by friends Cathy and Terry to go birding, on 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 days, out of the house from 7:15 a.m. to about 8:15 in the evening. By the end of the day, we had seen a total count of 19 owls, from three species - 8 Short-eared Owls, 9 Snowy Owls, and 2 Great Horned Owls.

The beautiful Great Horned Owl, seen in my photo, was the highlight of the day for Cathy and myself! Cathy had spotted it from the road but from the opposite side of the distant barn. All she had seen was a tiny head silhouette with what looked like ear tufts : ) We turned a corner and drove just a little way to see if we could get a better view from the other side. How we longed to be able to get a closer look, but the barn was on someone's private property, of course. While we were there, a truck suddenly appeared around the corner and turned into the driveway of the farm. Needless to say, we (thanks, Terry!) couldn't resist the chance to go and ask the owner about his owl and, wonderfully, he allowed us to walk through his farm yard to get a less distant view. So, Justin, you arrived home "just-in" time for us (Terry's humour)! Thanks so much for happily letting us on to your property. It was so much appreciated. We definitely didn't want to risk disturbing the owl or make it fly - so this is a 48x zoomed image and cropped somewhat. We loved both the owl's pose and the beautiful, red, peeling paint! "Just" a Great Horned Owl, but what a delightful sight!

Also saw a Prairie Falcon 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.

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