Snowy Owls, Prairie Falcon, Buntings Lost opportunity, no chance for wild horses. (20130208)

I had picked up my Lens from repair on Wednesday and was anxious to get it into the field to make certain it would be up to our coming trip to California.So I set up my calibrating gear, and was very disappointed with the results. I had to call Zel and cancel our trip out to Wild horse county, so that I could get the lens into the shop and see if it could get functioning properly! I picked Zel up at 9:00 a.m, 2 hours later than planned.And we were out of the Camera Store by 10:30 with a lightened heart and fully functioning unit. Our first bird was a long distance, on the ground, female or juvenile snowy.  Our next encounter were with some smaller avian friends.

These are very tough birds to get to sit still long enough to grab a shot of them.

We happened onto an almost pure white male, but he spooked before we could get some close up shots, we grabbed some long distance field shots, but not really what we wanted. So we went for lunch hoping he would be back where we first saw him in an hour or two.  Lunch was great but not uneventful.  On our way out we found our white friend again, but he did not move from his ground spot. So we found some other "targets" like this fellow.

Of course we were able to find a couple of our original target birds, like this little lady (no crop).

I usually don' manage to capture the "take-off" very well, but how about these talons? This was a different bird then the shot above actually.

We headed down to the Short Earred Owl country to see if we could find them before the sun set. We didn't find the SEO's but we did find a Prairie falcon:)

We finished up our tour with a couple more Snowy's, including this cooperative lady.

So the day finished up strong and colourful, it could have been a lot worse. I hope you enjoy the shots, and that you have a great wildlife weekend!
Turbo