Hanging out with an owl
Canon 5DIII camera with a Canon 500mm lens: 1/1250 of a second at f/4 on ISO 2500
I have had a couple of visits with a Great Gray Owl on one of the backroads in West Bragg over the past week. This particular section of the gravel road has only yielded one moose a couple of years ago. Still, it is a beautiful area so I often head up there as far as the private gate that cuts off the road’s climb out of the forest to a hilltop meadow. Last weekend I was turning my car around and having a look up at the wind-broken treetops more out of habit than expectation. The owl was perched in shadow just inside the forest’s edge.
Canon 5DIII camera with a Canon 500mm lens: 1/1250 of a second at f/4 on ISO 2500
I hopped out and watched him for a minute before climbing up the hill across from the trees so that I could be at a similar height to the perch and hopefully catch some hunting action whenever the owl decided to dive down.
Note regarding the gender of this owl: I say him, because there was no urgency to this owl so I presume a nest full of owlets wasn’t waiting at home. I could easily be wrong – I have not figured out how to determine whether a Great Gray Owl is male or female – yet. So, I will stick with he for now as I much prefer that over “it”. Either way, between concentrated stares into the tall grass below, feather grooming and very quick naps occupied his time.
Canon 5DIII camera with a Canon 500mm lens: 1/1250 of a second at f/4 on ISO 2500
From his perch, the owl was busy looking around in the direction of any sounds or movement on the ground. I heard little and saw less – the same was definitely not true for my figurative companion. After the better part of an hour, he gave a quick shake and then dove almost straight down.
Canon 5DIII camera with a Canon 500mm lens: 1/1250 of a second at f/4 on ISO 2500.
I captured a few nice frames of the dive (the image above and the one that opens this post) but he disappeared from my view into the tall grass. A couple of hops brought the now familiar head into sight and I could see he missed his target.
Canon 5DIII camera with a Canon 500mm lens: 1/1250 of a second at f/4 on ISO 2500
He launched back into the air and settled on the branch of a dead tree. This time he was in the morning sun so he favoured me with a different setting to photograph him in. Very photographer friendly was this fellow.
Canon 5DIII camera with a Canon 500mm lens: 1/3200 of a second at f/4 on ISO 1600
I stayed on my hill for another half an hour and enjoyed watching the grooming, staring and napping habits. I left him there and continued on the back roads.
Canon 5DIII camera with a Canon 500mm lens: 1/3200 of a second at f/4 on ISO 1600
This weekend, I had the house to myself and ended up sleeping in late on the morning I had planned to head out for sunrise. Still, I was back on the same country road around 8 am with faint hopes of a repeat visit. Scanning the broken trees again, I found no wildlife of any kind and completed my turn around. Then, I saw the owl sitting in a branch about 20′ off the ground on the side of the road opposite where I had been looking.
Canon 5DII camera with a Canon 70-200mm lens + 1.4 extender at 121mm: 1/800 of a second at f/6.3 on ISO 640
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Canon 5DIII camera with a Canon 500mm lens: 1/3200 of a second at f/4 on ISO 500
He gazed at me for a few seconds, I nodded and he continued the pattern of watching, grooming and napping that I had watched the week before. He added a bit of variety with a yawn here…
Canon 5DIII camera with a Canon 70-200mm lens + 1.4X extender at 280mm: 1/2000 of a second at f/5.6 on ISO 2500
A wing stretch there…
Canon 5DIII camera with a Canon 70-200mm lens + 1.4X extender at 280mm: 1/2000 of a second at f/6.3 on ISO 2500
After a half an hour, the owl flew to another stump and then went higher up into the trees further up the road. As he launched out of the tree and went past me, I had a nice opportunity for a couple of in flight shots.
Canon 5DIII camera with a Canon 70-200mm lens + 1.4X extender at 280mm: 1/1600 of a second at f/6.3 on ISO 1600
Canon 5DIII camera with a Canon 70-200mm lens + 1.4X extender at 280mm: 1/1600 of a second at f/6.3 on ISO 1600
He seemed to decide he had other places to be and flew deeper into the forest after just a couple of minutes perched in the canopy.
Canon 5DIII camera with a Canon 500mm lens: 1/1250 of a second at f/4 on ISO 2500
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The Spirit of a Nation – my article about a great annual event
The new Bragg About the Creek magazine has just been published. My article, The Spirit of a Nation, about the Tsuu T’ina First Nation’s Annual Pow Wow and Rodeo is included in this issue. The article, more a photo essay, presents images and some of my thoughts from the past three celebrations. If you are interested in viewing the article with text and high-resolution images, please click this link (note – the file is a 2.3 MB PDF).
I live in Redwood Meadows on Tsuu T’ina land and the Beaver Dome (where the Pow Wow takes place) and the rodeo grounds are just across the road. My neighbours put on a collection of great events for young, old and everyone in-between. I have always had a fantastic time and, if you have an opportunity to visit Bragg Creek this summer, consider checking out this year’s celebration which runs from July 26th to the 28th.
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Owl flights in Bragg Creek
Canon 5DIII camera with Canon 500mm F/4 IS lens: 1/1250 second at f/4 on ISO 2500
Kezia and I drove out to see the owl the other night. This visit was a real treat. The Great Gray Owl was very relaxed and flew towards us in two short glides separated with twenty minutes of perching on a fencepost.
Canon 5DIII camera with Canon 500mm F/4 IS lens: 1/1250 second at f/4 on ISO 2500
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Canon 5DIII camera with Canon 500mm F/4 IS lens: 1/640 second at f/4 on ISO 4000
Kezia was delighted watching the owl’s swooping flight and she whispered to the owl urging her to keep flying. As it got darker the owl got more active so Kezia got to watch it flying every couple of minutes. It moved into the forest, came back and then crossed the road, perched nearby and then we left for home.
Canon 5DIII camera with Canon 500mm F/4 IS lens: 1/640 second at f/4 on ISO 4000
It was a great evening to be out, especially with Kezia and I having so much fun.
Canon 5DIII camera with Canon 500mm F/4 IS lens: 1/320 second at f/4 on ISO 5000
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Moose in Bragg Creek (now snow-free)
Mother Nature flipped a switch a week ago and now we are free of snow and the temperatures are t-shirt appropriate. The moose probably aren’t excited about the warmer weather but I’m sure they are enjoying snacking on the new greenery. Looking at the photographs of this young bull moose afterwards, it struck me that it has been about nine months since I have had snow-free backgrounds of moose.
Regarding the moose, expect that they will start retreating for the cooler forest just after dawn pretty soon. I think it is finally safe to say we are now coming out of the mild, but very long, winter here.
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On the edge of Kananaskis with an owl
(click on any image to open a window to a higher resolution version)
I persuaded my children to join me for a drive through Bragg Creek into Kananaskis last night to look for the Great Gray Owls that have returned to some of their summer haunts. We traveled several of the backroads with not much wildlife found but the sun was out and we enjoyed chatting away. I had turned back towards home when Kian spotted a beautiful Great Gray up in an aspen tree.
Its plumage matched the bark quite well and I had completely missed it. Luckily my son’s sharp eyes did not.
Having accomplished the find, Kian then returned to his story while Kezia and I got out and watched the owl swoop across the open forest between trees for almost an hour. There was great light and the owl was hunting and resting normally so we enjoyed the encounter and I was rewarded with some great opportunities to photograph the bird.
By 8 pm, it was time for bed – for the kids not the owl – so we left her perched on a branch near the road and went home.
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The return of owls (and wisdom)
It has been just about ten months since my last encounter with a Great Gray Owl (Strix nebulosa) in one special area I frequently visit in Bragg Creek. Last year, there was a two month stretch where I would regularly see one or more of four owls in the forest and fields there. The long absence could be for any number of reasons but most likely it was me not seeing them or them not wanting to be seen. I know from talking with people in Bragg Creek that owls remain year round but I think some rotate around different spots throughout the year and some migrate away for at least a few months.
Last night I went for a drive with my daughter to see what animals were out and about. When I first spied this owl it was perched on a sapling standing in the middle of one of the meadows. It was a couple of hundred metres away so we watched for a minute and then carried on. About a half an hour later we returned and found the owl in a tree along the fenceline. It was watching over the grassland and soon dove successfully on a field mouse. It carried that back to a fencepost, had its snack and then went for another one. Given the place it was, the way it hunted and its markings I think it was one of the four from last year. She looked hungry so I imagine there are owlets back at her nest. Over a fifteen minute period of watching her, three rodents fell victim to her aerial strikes.
It was special to be there with my daughter for this encounter. However she fell asleep as it was close to her bedtime so I will show her the pictures and we will have to return – maybe tonight. Last year I had almost daily encounters with the Great Grays in this area. I can only hope for a repeat this spring.
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Hide and seek with a woodpecker
We have two types of woodpeckers that visit the trees in our backyard. The Downy is the smaller of the two but they are very similar looking otherwise. The Hairy woodpecker is a beautiful bird and I watched one of them as it pecked at tree trunks for insects under the bark. They like to hammer one spot for several seconds and then move around the tree or off to another trunk.
(click on any image to open a page with a higher resolution version)
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As this one flew around it felt like it was playing peek-a-boo with me in between hunts. Another good encounter in the backyard alongside the Black-capped chickadees and the Common redpolls.
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Squirrel mischief
Actually the Red squirrels that I was photographing a couple of different times over the weekend weren’t getting up to too much trouble so the title is a little bit misleading. However, when I watch them tearing up and down trees, leaping between branches, grabbing seeds, etc. they seem mischievous. We had one, in the image below, that found a way into our attic from the outside last year, that crossed from mischief into nuisance but a live trap and rodent proofing measures allowed us to remove it and for it to return to the backyard
(click on any image to open a page with a higher resolution version)
This same squirrel is drawn to the bird feeders I have put out over the years. It successfully pilfered from or destroyed each of them! That has been stopped with the current, rather ugly, feeder which the squirrel can neither knock down nor draw seeds from. Some of the birds that visit, nuthatches in particular, are very picky about the seeds they eat so many seeds drop to the ground which birds and squirrels alike enjoy snacking on.
Nevertheless the squirrel still takes a crack at this feeder every couple of days as seen above. Below, he is perched on the top of the metalwork that holds the feeder as well as flowers in the summer.
Even with seeds scattered on the deck, when I observe the squirrels eating they prefer stripping cones from the tall conifers they run around in all day to get at the seeds within. We seem to have an equilibrium with the squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, birds and voles in the backyard. May it continue to last.
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Forest portraits of a Bragg Creek moose
When the mother and calf had retreated into the woods, this moose remained in the meadow and kept grazing.
When she moved into a stand of brambles, I used larger apertures to minimize the depth of field to separate her head from the branches in the foreground and background.
The shallow plane of focus and a black and white conversion worked well for this image below.
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It’s cold and the moose are out
The moose around Bragg Creek, and elsewhere I would imagine, like the cold. When the thermometer drops below zero, they seem to come out. The colder, the better. This weekend we have stayed below -20°C and I found moose in a few different places around West Bragg Creek.
I got to spend an hour with a small herd of three cows and one calf. They were pretty docile, grazing on slender, red branches for much of the morning. They moved together and apart between stands of these branches and more open meadow. The young one played a little bit, running between mother and minders a couple of times.
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Winter landscape: fire in the sky
The glow before sunrise caught bands of clouds above the forests in West Bragg Creek. With the temperature below -20°C, it was warming to see this early fire in the eastern sky. I enjoyed taking a break from following moose tracks for a few minutes to watch the morning arrive.
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Of Kananaskis and Bragg Creek
There are significant pressures on the forests that extend from Bragg Creek through Kananaskis Country. Kananaskis has sixty parks within its borders which protect two-thirds of the area. Kananaskis was set up as a multi-use area which would address the “needs of industry, ranching and tourism are still balanced with the mandate to preserve the animals, plants, and processes that keep the Kananaskis Country ecosystem healthy” (history). The current plans include a clearcut of roughly 700 hectares west of Bragg Creek around the Moose Mountain area. I was asked to pull together a gallery of images from West Bragg Creek and Kananaskis that could help show what stands to be lost if plans like this are acted upon. Click on the image below to link to this gallery if you are interested.
Clear-cutting scares me. I grew up in the Kootenay Valley in British Columbia’s interior and my father had a logging operation along with several tourism based businesses. His crew harvested forests by employing selective logging, they didn’t clearcut. The areas which were clearcut in the valleys there, and here in Alberta, often do not recover well. The topsoil washes away, new trees planted have challenges taking hold and then there are the animals. Obviously they can’t stick around once the cover, their homes and their food is lost. The impact is severe for most species and I hope the efforts made to change the current plans are successful. The Bragg Creek and Kananaskis Outdoor Recreation group has their finger on the pulse of this issue. For those who are interested there are things we can do to be heard and help to influence the decision makers. If you are interested, please visit their website for information on the proposed logging and what is being done. Sustain Kananaskis is another group that is working very hard to raise awareness and change the current plans. I do not have any direct connection with Sustain Kananaskis but their website has a lot of information and I agree with everything that I see in their mission statement.
