Sitting at 233 birds for the year, I offered Dan to try and find him a Sharptail Grouse to bump up his score up to 234 for the year. We headed off in the foggy, frosty morning. I grabbed this shot while waiting for Dan to arrive @ 7:01, with the help of a neighbours headlights.
After waiting for Muley to cross the road in downtown Okotoks, things just went down hill. We found some Whitetails, Ravens and Magpies but the Sharpies were no where to be found. Finally I told Dan we were headed east to more open country to find his birds. A Northern Goshawk flew across the road in front of us but it didn't land anywhere where we could get a shot. We found a large (~250) Redpolls.
I thought that I would throw in a second shot here.
We spied a coyote and had a fly-by Northern Shrike. Just up the road was a second Shrike sitting in a tree up the road. We grabbed a couple of initial shots, as we weren't getting a lot to shoot at today so then I spied an area wher ewe could get closer, and pulled in. Dan said he had to take a leak, he had been watering fence posts all day long, with just one coffee? So he left his camera in the truck while I started to see how to get closer to the Shrike. Next thing I hear is "Grouse", Dan had his hands full so he didn't get a shot off, but he saw 15 versions of the bird we had been looking for all day. Success!!
We snuck over to get a look where they landed but they flushed again almost right away. While we were over there we flushed a Prairie Falcon (my first of the year), and the Shrike returned chasing a Redpoll, and gave the opportunity to fire off a couple of snaps.
This Juvenile was quite cooperative.
And one final shot, with his mouth open, no crop!
On the way home we also spotted our first of the season Snowy owls. It was very skittish, so we didn't get any shots. A great day, for birds, but no light so the shots look terrible.
Turbo
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