On the way to pure whiteness

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 on 20 December 2014. 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 almost 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 : )

Yesterday, 20 December 2014, was the 22nd (?) annual Fish Creek Park New Year's Day Bird Count. I ended up with photos of just three birds - a Black-capped Chickadee, a Great Horned Owl and a female Three-toed Woodpecker. Am meeting up with a different group of friends this morning in the same area, and hoping that we might just be lucky enough to find the tiny Northern Pygmy-owl this time. That's the only reason I am up so early this morning!