We headed out to the "Ranch" for a morning of wildlife viewing. It has been treating me so well this year I find it hard to pass up time there. Tim was up for a run just about anywhere, it seems like maybe the "city" was catching up with him. We had a very early morning GHO. It was even sitting on a hay bale, but there just wasn't enough light of even an "evidence" shot. We were treated to a beautiful golden morning, and I grabbed a couple images of a Ruffed Grouse in a tree, but again the images were very poor. Our next critter was this cow moose. I have been coming out to the ranch for more than 5 years now, and I always check out this little swampy area, and today it paid off.
We were swinging back out of one of my favourite roads when we both spotted this Great Grey at the same time. It had been right beside the road and flew up into a tree, then to another. It was quite a distance off, and I was surprised to "find" it in the spruce trunks.
It was the "nice" enough to come down a little closer and provide us with another opportunity. We found this owl to be very skittish. I believe we have seen it a number of times before but this might be the first time that I have been able to get any shots.
A little further out the road we found this Ruffed on the side of the road. The light had disappeared on us, but we did manage a couple of images.
I have included this next bird as a demonstration of how some of our domestic fowl hasn't changed too much, other than size from some of the "wild" stock they may have originated from. I really like how closely coloured this is to the Ruffed we spotted earlier in the day.
While working our way back home we found this lighter morph Redtail. Now while I say "lighter" morph, I have learned enough about these birds to be dangerous this year. This is more likely to be a light Harlan's than a Redtail :)
Tim was able to grab some other shots of a third Ruffed Grouse on the day, and a darker morphed bird that I didn't get any images of. I am hoping he will send them along so I can add them here. I will close this post out with another "wing" shot of yet another Redtail?
We had a GREAT morning with some quality encounters! The wind started to come up hard so we headed home and still had a good portion of the day to deal with "home stuff". Get out to the woods for a couple of hours, it will do you a world of good!
Turbo
Update: Here are a couple of shots from Tim. He doesn't share his images on-line anywhere yet so I cannot direct you to other pieces of his work. Here is one of the treasures that came to him while we were waiting for the GGO to reappear. It is Grey, a Jay instead of an owl :)
He also had a little visit from this beautiful Ruffed Grouse while I was up at the other end of the road.
Then there were a couple of hawks that we grabbed on the road home, this first one is a Rough-legged. The light was really tough, but I believe he go some excellent images.
This next shot is of a Harlan's hawk. I guess we live in more of a hot spot for them, then many of us had thought.
Hope you enjoy Tim's shots!
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