Palouse – first impression
I’m visiting the Palouse for the first time over the weekend. The spring landscape in the early light this morning presented many of the hues in the Easter color palette. As for first impressions, this is truly beautiful country and it is a fantastic place to explore. There is much more to say, but the sun is shining and there are many more Easter eggs to find in these hills.
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Great horned owls
The prairies around High River are dotted with small stands of trees. These islands on the grasslands are usually home for a good number of birds. Last weekend, I visited a long running favorite stand of mine where a pair of great horned owls have raised chicks for 30+ years I have been told.
The morning I arrived, the female was in the nest – presumably the eggs are incubating now. The male was perched nearby and over the course of an hour he made two sorties to other trees and grabbed one field mouse along the way.
Other than that little bit of action, there was a lot of dozing in the nest and a few very slow blinks by the male too. He kept his eyes on the magpies that came nearby now and then as well as anything else that flew or drove by. But it was generally a fairly quiet morning – I think they were both resting up before the chicks are born. When that happens the activity level necessarily picks up considerably.
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A spring aurora on the prairie
A red alert from the Aurora Watch website late on the 27th prompted me to head north in search of the Northern Lights. I traveled around for a while on either side of midnight – the sky was clear but the lights were very soft. Eventually the sky’s glow began to build and I stopped on Jumping Pound Road south of Cochrane to watch the Aurora Borealis as it rose up. There was a great arch that developed and sprites pulled away at different times throughout the show.
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Mallards in motion
As spring takes hold, you can find ducks busy wherever there is water. Whether it is at a lake still mostly covered with ice or a pond that is not much more than a puddle in a field, a male and female pair are often there paddling, wading, fishing or cleaning. I found this couple in a shallow depression where snow melt had collected. The light was warm gold and I thought they looked absolutely beautiful.
As I slowed down, I flushed them into the air. I was disappointed in myself as I’d prefer to wait until they chose to fly on their own accord. Still, it was a transitory location for them and one that was close to the roadside so I didn’t carry too much concern away with me after watching them launch and head away.
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Signs of spring: mountain bluebirds
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Coyotes living on the prairies
On my frequent drives in search of snowy owls this winter, I often see coyotes. I admire how these creatures thrive during the winter and enjoy being able to watch them hunt mice across the fields. Here are a couple from the past month or so.
And a few more where individuals were going here and there across the prairies.
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Snowy owl flights
I started a morning last weekend watching a snowy owl. When she had a long yawn, that seemed like a good sign to keep moving. I left the napper and headed along a range road which ran due north. After a few miles, this owl popped into view as it flew out from behind a small bush.
Happily, it wasn’t too upset by the disturbance and landed about 100 metres to the east. I took a few photos from the roof of my car and then pulled out my longest lens (500mm) and the monopod as it felt like I had time before he might start hunting again.
That started a great 90 minute stretch where I was able to move into good positions (the owl, me and the sun in a line) a couple of times while he hunted across the field. There was a lot of preening, listening and looking around (and the occasional glance my way) in between the three flights he made while I was there.
He flew back to the road, and directly past me, on the first flight and landed where a slight rise afforded a view in both directions. He stayed pretty alert and it did not take very long before a target was found.
The owl flew a very short distance and then dropped on the far side of the road. He grabbed a small mouse that was beneath the snow but not safe from this accomplished hunter.
He finished second breakfast and flew back close to the roadside perch. The light was amazing and lit up the golden eyes.
More than an hour later he flew across the field away from me and I headed home.
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A sunny snowy morning
Snowy owls have been a focus of mine this winter. Last Saturday I was east of Calgary again – touring the back roads, looking for owls and, when they were found, working to not spook them. A few of my earlier visits to the prairies have been frigid experiences. That day was pleasantly different – the sun cut through the clouds early and they moved on altogether by mid-morning but did so without a heavy wind pushing them. The relatively mild and calm weather was welcome indeed.
The day was productive in every sense. I found two owls just after daybreak near Gleichen. I spotted the first one as she flew parallel to the road I was traveling down. The second was perched on this fence line but he took off as the first neared. The displacer landed and fussed with her feathers while scanning the ground. The sun lit her up a couple of times which was special. She eventually glided over the fields behind her and landed on a rise after catching an unlucky creature for breakfast. I drove below the rise and caught her yawning before she rested and dozed for a bit.
Note: this snowy is mottled with dark and light feathering and that used to be thought to be exclusively females and the almost pure white owls were males. Over the last few years, that has been disproven (some females are all white and some males are not). There is no visible way to confirm the sex that I am aware of so I still refer to a white one as “he” and the others as “she”. That is a bit of anthropomorphization but I really dislike calling animals “it”.
I had an encounter with a beautiful almost solid white snowy owl an hour later a little further north of this spot. I will share that story with him soon!
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Splashing the clouds with color at dawn
Before photographing down in the fog a week ago, I stopped along the Trans-Canada Highway on the hill overlooking Springbank to watch the sunrise.
The eastern sky was starting to brighten quickly and I hoped the clouds would catch the early light. The fog was quite close to the hilltop when I first arrived but it fell back down before dawn came. The sunlight did bathe the clouds in amazing colors. It was spectacular!
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Photographs from a foggy landscape
Last weekend when fog stretched out across Calgary, I spent the morning photographing along the western edge near Springbank and east of the city around Delacour. The density of the fog changed constantly which was great fun to play with in the images I made.
At times the sun would break through the haze. Some of those moments were incredible just to watch as shafts of sunlight pierced the fog and were then quickly absorbed.
I returned to a weathered old truck that I’ve shot over the years. The fog’s isolation allowed for some new images of this charismatic vehicle.
Much like the train tracks above, I loved how the road disappeared – there is an ethereal quality that is lent to these images by the fog.
The trees that dot the prairies individually and in small stands drew my eye throughout the morning. Sometimes the fog hid them and sometimes it isolated them as with the truck above. Often they were just beautiful scenes to enjoy and shoot before they changed into something new.
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Bald in eagle in a blue sky
A couple of days ago I spotted this bald eagle balanced atop a telephone pole. He was watching a small conspiracy of ravens gathered on a snow pile on the edge of a field in Springbank.
After a few minutes his curiosity seemed to get the best of him and we launched towards the group. He spiralled above them for a moment but must not have seen anything too appealing as he landed on another telephone pole instead of amongst the ravens.
Maybe it was just to have a closer look before deciding. Either way he decided not to stick around for long and flew a couple of hundred metres away and into a stand of trees isolated in middle of the field.
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Flying low on the prairies
I spent a morning on the prairies between Irricana and Langdon this weekend. I met up with my good friend, and fellow photographer, Jeff Rhude in Delacour and continued east from there to see what we could find. We were looking for owls and an hour before sunrise, we made out three individuals perched in different locations. It was much too dark to photograph with any reasonable expectation of making a good image. To us, their presence boded well for later, when the day was much brighter. A glowing sunrise welcomed the day and after photographing that for a little bit, we began combing the fields and fence posts for snowy owls. The ones seen in the pre-dawn gloom were nowhere to be found but several kilometres away we did find this one standing on the snow in a field.
The snowy took flight and let the wind push her eastward, across the road in front of us, until she landed on a fence post. She did not stay there long before diving into the snow on the far side of a frozen pond. That was a bit too far to see if she caught something but it looked like she did.
Soon after she jumped off the snow again and flew low over the ground before rising up enough to clear the fenceline.
That flight took her up to the gate of a compressor station. We photographed her for another three hours afterwards. I’ll cover that in my next post.
