Snowy Owl with mountain bokeh

This photo was taken on 12 February 2015, which was spent SE of the city, with friends Cathy and Terry. They 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. The temperature reached a brief high of 13C around 1:00 and 2:00 pm, which felt so good, especially for mid-winter. There was an unusual layer of white haze along the foot of the mountains for much of the day.

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 a "Wrong Way" sign in the dark, 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! This photo was taken at 48x, focal Length (35mm format) - 1200 mm. We had to deal with a lot of heat distortion during the day, so some photos are far from sharp.

Other birds included a flock of Snow Buntings, plus two individuals that were perched on a fence. Another bird we saw was a beautiful Falcon perched on an electricity pylon - not a large bird, so presumably a Prairie Falcon, not a Gyrfalcon. Also a group of Grey Partridge that suddenly flew before we had noticed them.

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 giving me time to photograph the various barns we came across!