Redpolls, Rainbow Trout, Snowy Trip to the South East with Dan (20130322)

With clear skies and cooler weather, Dan and I were on the road to see if we could find the Short Earred Owls and the Snow Buntings of last week.  We couldn't spot any owls, but we made our way into Frank Lake, there were thousands of Canada Geese and Pin Tailed ducks. There were American Widgeons and Northern Shovelers. The female Pin tails seemed to be very heavily out numbered by their male counterparts.

Here is a Canada Goose shot, with two of them. I was overall very disappointed with the shots produced.

After about an hour or more at the lake we headed out looking for the Buntings. We spied a nice male Snowy but the images were not presentable, he was pretty skittish. Along the way we ran into a lot of Horned Larks along the way, although they too were reluctant to sit still very long.

We found a few small flocks Snow Buntings, but nothing like what Jamie and I had found last week. We headed over to the "Redpoll" spot. We had great light so we spent some time, shortly after the arrival of a few birds, a Merlin appeared, then disappeared. We don't know if it grabbed anything or not.

Here's another.

I just love these small birds, and their behaviour, soon we won't see them again next year.

After this joyful little respite, we headed over to the Carsland Weir, and I grabbed this shot of a fisher landing a this sweet Rainbow!

Not too far away, I managed to grab this shot of an uncommon Hoary Redpoll.

Okay, Okay, Okay, no more Redpoll shots for this season. We found a group of 10 paired up Grey Partridge. This is a very poor image, but I thought I would throw one up.

We wrapped the morning up with this Snowy, then headed home.

It was a welcome day to have this much light. Tomorrow is supposed to be a nice day as well. I hope everyone has a great wildlife weekend!
Turbo