My Christmas present to my daughter : )

So far, the winter of 2014/2015 seems to be really good for Snowy Owls. The last two or three weeks, I had been longing to get out there, especially to the E and NE of the city, to look for these spectacular birds of prey. I finally got out, after my youngest daughter asked if I wanted to go looking for Snowies on our Christmas get-together three days ago. She had never seen a Snowy Owl, so I was really, really hoping that we'd find one! As it turned out, we saw 10 definite individuals, plus two others that we weren't quite sure about - one certainly looked like a very distant Snowy and the other was possibly a repeat of an owl we had seen earlier in more or less the same area.

Part way through the day, almost as if it were meant to happen, a car came from the opposite direction - it was my friends, Cathy and Terry! For the rest of our trip, we followed behind them, thoroughly enjoying every new find. Late afternoon, we went home different ways and my daughter and I saw our last two owls. My daughter was so thrilled to see these breathtaking birds and was quite happy and content after seeing the very first, distant one. Three of the owls gave us close or reasonably close views, the rest were very distant. The owl in this photo is a male, as it is pure white.

www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/snowy_owl/lifehistory

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_owl

After these wonderful sightings, we returned to Calgary and went back to my daughter's place to exchange Christmas gifts. I reckon the Snowy Owls were the "best" gifts she received that day : )

I'm posting very early this morning (4:15 am), as I have to get ready to go on the Drumheller Christmas Bird Count, NE of the city, in the Badlands of Alberta. I almost stayed up all night again, as I wasn't sure I would hear my alarm clocks go off and I really did not want to risk missing this Count. It takes roughly an hour and a half to get out there.