Blue sky, white owl
The cold morning cleared out a few early clouds and the afternoon east of High River was bright under a deep blue sky. I found a couple of Snowy owls across the day with this one’s flight after launching from a telephone pole standing out due to the sunlight catching the yellow eyes brilliantly. A great day on the prairies with these beautiful animals.
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A Snowy day on the Prairies
I have a deep admiration for Snowy owls. The range they cover, their adaptability, their calm repose they show when resting and their beauty while in flight are just the tip of a long list. This time of the year is exciting for me as it marks the return of these owls to the prairies. I was aware of recent sightings near Frank Lake and decided to head down there on the weekend. A beautiful sunrise greeted me shortly after I arrived and then I set about touring the backroads in search of these wonderful birds.
After an hour I found this owl perched on the fence dividing up the prairie. She watched me stop and get out of my car with some interest and then spent much of the next four hours ignoring me! I packed on as much glass as I had (a 500mm with a 1.4x extender) and crossed onto the field. She was a couple of hundred meters from the road so I took an indirect line to get closer and tried to make sure I didn’t make her anxious or uncomfortable. After 15 minutes I was about 30 metres away and she head her eyes closed more than open. The photograph above was one of the moments when she looked my way. Over the next hour and a half, the wind blew, she made two separate short flights low over the fields returning to a nearby fence post, I got chilled and she seemed to catch up on a fair bit of sleep. I loved sharing time there and when she finally flew off across the road and out of sight, I thought that was the end.
I was wrong. I returned to my car, packed things up again, and drove west back towards Frank Lake. About two kilometres down the road, there she was standing in a field of sticks close to the road. These dried out stalks made an interesting environment to photograph the owl in and I set up in the ditch so I was low to the ground. Looking at the time stamp on the image files, we stayed there for more than two hours, however it did not seem anywhere near that long. She started to become a bit restless for a few minutes before she flew. Preening feathers and looking around in all directions until she finally leaped back into the air.
I followed her to her intended destination which was a pair of grain silos just across the road. She alighted next to the open cover of one of the silos and I had a perfect spot to watch her leaning against my car.
The picture above was not the owl landing on the silo. There must have been mice in the silo because during the 20 minutes she perched on that lip she spent a fair bit of time looking down into hole. Staring intently mostly but a couple of times she spread her wings out and I thought she might dive in there. When she flew off, she followed the roofline down and disappeared from my view. I think she was chasing a mouse but I’m not sure if she caught it or not.
After a few seconds, the owl flew back into sight when it banked around the silos and crossed the road again. I followed her once again until she disappeared over the low rise. Again, I thought that was the end of this extended visit.
Again, I was wrong. She landed a little further down the road, I followed and we spent another hour watching one another. Well, me watching her and her paying much more attention to everything else.
The weather was changing fast with the wind carrying the clouds further east and leaving blue sky and sunshine behind. I think both the owl and I enjoyed that. I had bundled up so the chill was gone – the Snowy had no such challenges.
The encounter did truly end when she either grew tired of my company or was ready for a meal off of the prairie. A pretty fantastic experience for me.
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Reconnecting with the Snowy owls
I drove to High River yesterday and spent the morning touring the gravel roads looking for wildlife on the prairies. My hope was to find a Snowy owl as they have begun returning there. An hour after sunrise, east of Frank Lake, I spied a beautiful owl perched on a fence line and I spent the next four hours watching it sit, fly, hunt and then sit. A lot of watching while she dozed or scanned the surroundings but it was time I enjoyed completely. I wanted to share this photograph of the bird from the early afternoon when she landed in a field and was surrounded by sticks left behind after the last harvest. I am excited to share more from the day and will soon.
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A hot Snowy owl on the prairie
The early spring this year may see the Snowy owls leave their wintering grounds around Southern Alberta soon. When I was in Irricana photographing this owl, it was 16°C and she was panting to stay cool. I’m not concerned about their health in this heat as their nesting sites in the north get into, and above, these temperatures in the summer. However, I don’t know when it, or something else, will prompt them to leave as they always do.
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Snowy owl on the hunt in Irricana
This Snowy owl’s dive into the grass directly below was a great moment to watch. The bird’s intense focus when it started tracking the prey from the perch on the fence through to the awesome descent to attack were welcome rewards given the time invested. I found this Snowy on this fence post a little after 9 am and quickly set up my camera and lens across the field from her. For the next 2 1/2 hours, she shuffled, scratched, preened, and dozed. She seemed to have little interest in me, the field mice or in flying for most of that time. She kept watch of everything going on around her but her talons may have been nailed to the wood! I was hadn’t expected to wait that long but with her relaxed manner, I hoped when she did fly it would be in the direction she faced when I first stopped. That direction was facing towards me and in the end she did do that. I thought if she flew that way, I would have a few in flight opportunities but this dive was short in both time and distance. I was happy to have captured a couple of frames before she disappeared into the grass.
I waited for about 10 minutes for her to climb out of the tall grass and when she did it was heading away from me. Given the time on the ground, I would wager that she did catch the prey and spent the time out of sight enjoying the meal.
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Clutching at grass
One of the Snowy owls that I photographed recently made a dive while I was watching. She came up without a mouse but had a clutch of grass instead. I’m sure it wasn’t her preference but it was a bit unusual to see one of these raptors flying around with a talon full of grass. She gave a couple of good looks around as she looked for another target during the same sortie but had no luck on this flight.
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Snowy owls aloft in the blue sky
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A Snowy owl’s elusive smile
This Snowy owl had been chirping at some ravens nearby when it was perched on a telephone pole and they were flying above. Eventually one came too close which prompted the owl’s leap into the air. She looped around the pole once before settling on another one further from the mischief makers. While banking in the turn photographed above she cried out again. This time proved an excellent opportunity to photograph her “smile”.
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A Snowy Owl’s flight over the prairies
On the weekend I followed reports of Snowy owls northeast of Calgary near Irricana. I left home early and arrived in the area just after sunrise. I was lucky enough to spy the first Snowie of the day perched on a fence post glowing in the soft light.
The pure white owls were until quite recently thought to always be males. That has been disproved leaving it hard to determine the gender from casual observation. I will allow for the old convention though and refer to this one as a he. The other four birds I photographed that morning were banded to varying degrees and I will refer to them as ladies in a future post. It took only a few minutes before he launched and scouted low over the field for breakfast. This was repeated a couple of times with each sortie ending with a return to the fence line.
On the last flight that I photographed of this owl, he flew away from the fence and landed in the middle of the field on a pipeline valve which allowed for an interesting backlit shot as he flared his wings to land.
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Happy New Year!
From my family to yours, we hope the new year sees you realize what you want, need and wish for. May you enjoy the journey throughout the year and beyond. Thank you for visiting my website and I hope you have enjoyed the photographs over the past year. I am looking forward to sharing more in 2015.
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After dark in Boundary Bay
After watching a Barn owl hunt across the long grass marsh flats at Boundary Bay through dusk in mid-March, I was packing up when I saw a Snowy owl perched on a log. It was about 100 yards away but the white oval shape stood out distinctively against the blues and blacks of evening.
I worked my way along the levee towards the bird and it just stared at me as I stopped about 50 feet away. We stared at one another for a minute and then the owl whipped its head around and cocked it towards some sound or motion I was oblivious to. It didn’t attack and went back to looking around for a while. A few minutes later, it launched onto another large piece of driftwood which was closer to the ground.
From there, the snowy stalked along the wood and ended up jumping into the grass at one point. It stayed in the grass for a little bit but I didn’t see whether it was successful in catching something or not.
The bay was dark by this time and I left the owl as it flew to another perch nearby. I had a few great encounters in Boundary Bay – I’m already excited to go back soon.
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An afternoon with a Snowy owl
With visions of the Boundary Bay owls still streaming past my mind’s eye, I went out for a drive on the Prairies this weekend. I have been working on my Snowy owl imagery pretty steady this winter and have found a few images to be elusive to create. For this trip east of Calgary, I was hoping to get some interactions showing a little personality as well as head on flight images. It turned out to be a great afternoon for both.
I went east on highway 22X and roamed a few of the range roads north of Carseland. I found a hawk followed by an eagle in the first couple of miles. I left the Bald eagle on its perch in a barren tree and zigzagged back towards the highway.
Well short of the main road, I found this Snowy owl perched on a fencepost a few hundred yards into the field. I waited for 15 minutes and then the bird launched and flew in front of me along the fenceline and crossed the gravel. I picked it up on a telephone pole nearby and that was its field base for the afternoon.
Over the next couple of hours, the owl dove off the beam several times and earned a few snacks along the grass and snow. At launch and during its return flights to the perch, it gave me some wonderful opportunities as it would keep an eye on me now and then.
During the long breaks between sorties, the owl sat largely motionless except for the full circles carved in the air by its head. There were a few great moments with interesting yawns,
ear scratching,
and humorous facial expressions.
One of the tours detoured to a long abandoned windmill which made for a great scene. The blue sky and white bird can make even a worn out relic look great! Well, that particular structure has a lot of good character on its own but I think you know what I mean.
So we had a good rhythm for quite a while and when I finally packed up it was in the middle of a glide back to the same perch. I would have loved to stay until the evening light but the hands were cold and the bird had been a very accommodating host so no reason to wear out the welcome.
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