Shortearred Owl, Snowy Owls, GHO's, Redpolls, New Year's Day, could this become a tradition? 130101

For our second New Year's Day in a row Jamie and I headed out looking for critters, I guess really we were primarily looking for wings. The Short Earred Owl was our target today. We had some early luck with our 8:30 a.m. Snowy Owl in its place so hopes were high. We grabbed a second Snowy  within an hour, but no photo ops presented. We chased some larks buntings and Redpoll's around for a little bit, with no luck, then we found a cooperative pair of Larks and they presented for us.

We next found our first good looking male snowy of the year :)

He is his getting ready to fly  here, a nice looking bird probably 2 or three years away from being all white.

We found a flock of about 4-500 Redpoll's hanging around an old wooden grainery and three big metal newer graineries. We got ourselves into position and just waited for them to land on the wooden building roof.  We had great conditions so I am very pleased with these shots.

We were off on the hunt again and found this fellow on the ground, he flew and this is a shot of him settling down after that short hop.

We were able to find this GHO taking in the sun on this glorious day, I am certain we have seen this owl before.

We also found this fellow not too far away, I expect this is a Male and the previous was a larger female, and I am expecting them to "hook up" and produce some babies. I will be keeping an eye on these two (if I am able).

On our second pass through SEO country we were able to spot first one, then a second SEO here is probably my best shot of one of these beauties. We got to observe these two for about an hour and believe we have learned some of their behaviour.

Here is a little better "wing" shot than the one I posted a short while ago.

And I couldn't finish the post without another Redpoll shots, the conditions were great!

Well that was what we deemed to be another successful New Year's Day outing. Certainly no big critters but 10 different owls, of three different varieties, and a couple of smaller beauties thrown in for good measure.  Have a Great wildlife weekend.
Turbo