Out looking for Great Grey's and Horses April 21, 2012

Picked Jamie up at 6:00 a.m. and got a shot of what I believe to be a Cross fox prior to day break it is carrying something in it's mouth, but poor light and long distance make for a bad combination for images.

Here is a sample of about 4-500 head of elk we saw, the 300 does do landscape very well:)

Not long after that we encountered our first Great Grey of the day, with very poor low light results, so I won't post any here. By mentioning it was our first, you know you've got shots coming:)
We found more Shrikes, Redtails and Roughies through out the morning.  Here is a blue bird, with less light it is actually easier to see the graduations of blue on their backs and wings. The 300 does give a nice blurry background.

We found a few moose and more predators, both of the four and two legged variety. I am including a shot here of a North American Bison.  There is talk of attempting to re-introduce these cranky critters into Banff National Park.  I think it would be a hoot to have some of these mighty animals continuing on in the park.

We managed to stay busy until we happened upon this fellow. We were able to get pretty close, I will post more images another day.

After this Great experience we headed out to wild horse country.  We had seen this article, and it had me quite concerned. Record number of wild horses caught and slaughtered We had lunch and managed to find this fellow. You might remember it from an earlier trip with Dan and Lauren.

Definitely looking the worse for wear. We found 6 horses, in an area where I would have historically been able to find 20-30.  We are hoping the few they have left will re-build the herds.
Our next great spot was of this Northern Hawk owl. We were lucky enough to watch as he dove down and grabbed this mouse. I like the way you can see the dried grass left behind in the air as he heads off with his meal.

As it turned out we had to boogie back to town as my wife had made us a dinner engagement, and we had some ground to cover.  We did take the time to grab a few shots of this Kestrel on the way home.
I thought he was a great sport in the way he turned his head so we could see most of his colouring.

We finished up with more of everything, but I thought I'd throw one more Bluebird your way. I was a little disappointed with the quality of the lens today, we will se how tomorrow's walk goes.

Turbo