Muley, GGO, GHO, (20140831) First run with new guy George

With some extra time around the house these days I contacted George, he and his wife are over here from England on a work exchange, and he was willing to take a run for Great Greys. A small group of Muley bachelors getting ready for the fall.

We were seeing Redtail's and Swainson's at distance with nothing really close to get good images of. Our next "shootable" subject was this Belted Kingfisher.

I finally managed to find George his owl. He has sent me a couple of images, so I will include them at the end of this post. We found the owl on a pole fence. He jumped down after something in the grass, but missed. Here he is jumping back up onto his "spot".

We spent a little time with bird and watched it try a couple more time to get breakfast. We finally saw it be successful. Here it is behind some grass flying to his morning meal.

While we were stopped for a cup of tea, we had two different Accipiter's fly over, likely following all the Warblers that are headed south. This is a long distance shot of a Coopers hawk.

Getting  near to out the road we saw this eagle. At first I thought it was a Golden as I had seen them in the area previously. We had time to get out of the truck and get semi-ready as the bird continued the left curve turn and flew right over our heads.

We had a bit of a short outing as I had a mission planned for the afternoon. Jamie and I were headed out looking for the Lewis's once again.  While we didn't find the "green" bird we did find this orange one.  I am pretty certain that this is a young Baltimore Oriole.

While we were out we did get the opportunity to spot a Cougar in the area. It was a fabulous sighting although Jamie only got a quick glimpse. We have been spotting tracks out in that area all winter long. No photos taken but knowing that they are in the area just gives us encouragement.  we finished the night with this little GHO next to the highway a full 30 minutes after sundown. I took some video but it unfortunately didn't turn out like I would have liked.

So it turned out to be a day of predators! You just never know what your are going to find when "you show up to shoot!"
Turbo

Here are a couple of George's shots from the morning, starting with our Pole dancing GGO.

And a fabulous shot of it "pouncing" just feet way: