Snow Bunting, still for a moment

On 12 February 2015, I spent the day SE of the city, with friends Cathy and Terry. They picked me up at 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 (my!) 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. I love the days that I'm in this area when the mountains are reasonably clear. Often, they look very hazy and sometimes they disappear completely.

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 recently, 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! One of the Great Horned Owls gave us a lovely view, although not close, with no branches getting in the way. Loved hearing it calling to its mate, who was presumably tucked into one of the neighbouring trees.

Other birds included a flock of Snow Buntings, plus two individuals that were perched on a fence. Usually when you see Snow Buntings, they are swarming in the air or landing briefly in a field before flying off in a huge mass. They are beautiful birds when seen in flight. Another bird we saw was a beautiful Prairie Falcon perched on an electricity pylon.

"Appropriately named, the Snow Bunting is a bird of the high Arctic and snowy winter fields. Even on a warm day, the mostly white plumage of a bunting flock evokes the image of a snowstorm." From AllABoutBIrds.

www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/snow_bunting/id

Many thanks, as always, Cathy and Terry, for a great day out, including the delicious chili you made and brought along. Fun and rewarding! 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!