Prairie Falcon

Posting this shot really just for the record and in the hope that someone might just happen to see it and be able to confirm or correct my ID. It was only a small bird of prey, so presumably a Prairie Falcon, not a Gyrfalcon.

www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/prairie_falcon/id

This photo was taken on 12 February 2015, which was spent SE of the city with friends Cathy and Terry. My friends picked me up around 7:00 am and I think I was home somewhere around 7:30 pm, after a great day of searching for owls, barns, and anything else that caught our eye. The weather was beautiful, as you can see in this photo. The temperature reached a brief high of 13C around 1:00 and 2:00 pm, which felt so good, especially for mid-winter. We had to deal with a lot of heat distortion during the day, so some photos are far from sharp.

Many of the roads we travelled along were roads that I had driven on myself, some of them a number of times. A few of the roads were new to me, which was a treat, including a "trail" that was so deeply rutted and snow-covered that I'm amazed that we ever got out of there! This track and another backroad that was new to me led to a few old barns that I really appreciated being shown. I think my friends were amused that I fell asleep on this very rough track - after only an hour and a half's sleep the previous night, on top of always being very sleep-deprived, I'm really not surprised. It's strange how some fields in the whole area were more or less bare and yet others had a lot of snow covering the stubble, with piles of snow lining the edges of the road.

As far as wildlife was concerned, we saw 11 owls - 8 Snowy Owls and 3 Great Horned Owls. The Snowies, other than the one perched on the "Wrong Way" sign that I posted the other day, were all extremely distant, so my photos are of white specks in a nice setting, ha. If I hadn't been with two people who can spot "everything", I'm sure that I would never have found most of these owls!

Other birds included a flock of Snow Buntings, plus two individuals that were perched on a fence - haven't checked yet to see if I have a sharp enough photo. Another bird we saw was this beautiful Falcon perched on an electricity pylon. Also saw a group of Grey Partridge that suddenly flew before we had noticed them. A Red Fox made a very fast appearance as it ran across the road, and we saw a small herd of Mule Deer.

Many thanks, as always, Cathy and Terry, for a great day out, including the delicious chili you made and brought along. A fun and rewarding day! Really appreciated being with you, doing what we all enjoy so much. Thanks, too, for patiently giving me time to photograph the various barns we came across!