Saturday 14 April 2012

Great day, er, no--Great Grey day!

Headed out this morning to where Jamie had found a Great Grey Owl last week. We started out with a skittish Kestrel, added some Roughies, and made a pass through the GGO territory. I decided I needed to give the truck a drink, so we headed out for gas, spotting a Great Blue Heron, a Northern Harrier, and more Roughies and Redtails, on the way out. On the way back in, we stopped and fired off a few frames at the first Heron of the year.
This is part of what I love about Southern Alberta, the importance of water; although the target shot was the Heron, in the bottom right you will find a Canada Goose, and behind and a little higher in the frame from the Heron you will see a Townsend Solitaire.
Back on the Trail of the GGO, I spied him on the ground with his meal:
After finishing off his mouse/vole, he popped up into an nearby Aspen so we could fire off a few frames.
After cleaning his beak he took a closer look at me.

He popped over to anther tree, and he was much better hidden from a camo perspective.
It was a super encounter that lasted full 5 minutes of camera snapping time. These are my first digital photos of a GGO, hopefully I will get more.
The rest of the trip  was made up primarily of Shrikes (I think we found 4 different birds), hawks, deer, and horses (Domestic). As you can probably tell the sky was heavy overcast so the light wasn't great and it was snowing for much of the time we were out there. I did manage a decent "action" shot of a Townsend Solitaire coming in for a landing.  These are very hard bird to get a good photo of due to their muted tones.  Autofocus has a very difficult time.

I am expecting Jamie to provide me with a Shrike shot or two.  He OWES me.

Turbo

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