Wednesday 9 January 2013

Great Horned Owls New guy out for an Owl prowl. (130106)

I have dealt with Brent for the last year or so at my local camera store, he had mentioned that he would like to grab some owl shots sometime. With my recent successes I thought that it might be a good time to get him our for a "tour". He was right on time at 7:30 a.m. While I was waiting for him I grabbed this quickie of two of the neighbourhood white-tailed jackrabbits. I think they look okay considering I only had the street light for illumination.

As we were buzzing out to "the zone" we spied an early morning GHO on a telephone line. Our regular 8:30 Snowy was in place and as skittish as ever. About a mile up the road we got an indication of what the day was going to be like. Our second Snowy was just as skittish as the first, but I think it "held" for Brent to get a decent shot. It was not even 8:30 in the morning and Brent considered it a successful day.
While the day looked promising from a sun perspective, but the wind was up and was supposed to be gusty all day, that is never a good thing. We continued on successfully finding owls in all of our hot spots. This is one of the GHO's that Tim and I located several weeks ago he was almost in exactly the same spot.
Our third GHO was in the vicinity that Tim's sharp eyes picked another out on the same trip. Brent was having a really good time. Then within about 10 minutes we found this nice buck in one of my favourite little spots.
We took our shots from inside the truck and moved along about 25 yards when I spotted our 4th GHO of the morning. We were kind of stuck. If we got out of the truck we were going to spook the buck, but he didn't want to stick around as he was uncomfortable with our extended presence. So he left and we were able to get into better position to grab some images.
Brent managed to spot a snowy in an open field on his own and was gaining confidence, it was great to see! We found one more snowy before we headed back to town. Just to put the icing on the cake I decided to take Brent over to FCPP and get him a couple of "citizen owls". Here is a shot of GHO5, no crop.
While we were taking these shots I pulled some sunflower seeds out and had Chickadees and Nuthatches eating out of our hands, this was pretty impressive for Brent. We finished up with the other readily accessible pair, they were together, but you couldn't see her face at all, so I'm posting this shot of him, again no crop.
So over all a great day, a dozen owls in all, 5 Snowy's and 7 GHO's. Brent says he really enjoyed himself, and is willing to "get out again" sometime. I hope everyone has a super Wildlife week!
Turbo



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