Wild horses, Ruffed Grouse, Blue Jay (20141206) Trying to ducplicate a great run from last year.

Last year about this time Kerri and I had a super day of sighting so Jamie and I thought we would see if we could replicate that success. While the day was somewhat warmer than last year, the wind was coming up, and that is never a good thing for wildlife viewing. Our first encounter of the day was a herd of 5 wild horses. Upon our approach they retreated to this stand of Pine trees.

It is always nice to find a youngster, like in the middle of this trio. Mom is on the right, she is the herd mare and makes the decisions of when to move. Here is a shot of the herd stallion. This wonderful looking stud should produce some interesting looking foals.

With the wind coming up I was suprised to find a grouse on the side of the road, but as we approached it flushed. The really dark colouration indicated to us it was likely a Spruce bird. We did find this Ruffed that held long enough for me to get a shot. I believe this rooster held as it was in a very protected area.

We ran quite a dry spell until we headed home and found this trio of blacks on a side road. The wind allowed us to get pretty close, but they spooked easily.

We also found this very approachable herd of 7 animals, there was a youngster with this group as well. It is on the far left of this shot.

Here is an image of the herd mare. They were all very intent on feeding so we left them to their business, as is our custom.

Things remained pretty quite, we did spot a Rough-legged Hawk and an Eagle on the way home. We also found our first group of the day as well.

Here is the Mare with her foal once again. I find the horse on the left to have quite interesting colouring. We also noted a lot of traffic on the roads of people cutting Christmas trees.

We also did a swing by our favourite Northern Pygmy Owl location, and while the owl wasn't showing itself we did spot a couple of birds around one of the driveways feeding on food. Here is a male Pine Grosbeak that is gleaning seeds.

There were also a couple of Blue Jays. This bird seems to be filling up on food.

We spoted another Rough-legged on the way home, but it was pretty quiet otherewise. Put some wild in your life this week!
Turbo

Winter birds, whitetail deer (20141202 and 05) A couple of trips to a city park

While I have been down to the park a couple more times to try and capture images of the Weasel. I have learned that shooting on cloudy days doesn't produce the best results of that little subject so I tend to head down anytime it is sunny. While down there the local birds always come to visit. This little male Downy shows off his colour.

Of course the Black-capped Chickadee always makes an appearance, there are many of these little beauties in the area.

Then usually as well there will be a female Downy or two. This little bird was just great to spend some time with.

I think Mom would be upset if I didn't throw in a shot of the White-breasted Nuthatch.

Unfortunately no Weasel appearance on this occasion. On a separate trip down, when sun was  forecasted to appear, but didn't was also Weasel-less. We were treated to a small herd of Whitetails. This is a Mom with her daughter and a "button" buck from another doe.

This little "fork horn" seemed very interested in the younger doe, they spent a little time nuzzling over the fallen aspen.

Then the dominant buck made his appearance. As I noted last year it is common for a large buck to pair up with a younger buddy for the winter. This provides the mature animal with a little more protection in the form of another pair of eyes, ears and nostrils.

Interesting to note the antlers on this fella. While he has a very nicely formed conventional antler on his left, his right antler is lacking one tine, and his typical brow tine has appeared way down by his eye. He was quick to identify the younger doe as a potential mate.

Just a little further up the trail he had the opportunity to "test" her receptiveness. you also get another look at the short misplaced brow tine in this image.

I don't expect the interest was to continue as the Bucks and Does separated for the evening. So even though the Weasel failed to appear we spent more than hour with these fine ungulates! Put some wild in your life this weekend!
Turbo

Ungulates-Moose, deer, Elk (20141130) A snowy Sunday run with Kerri

After a fantastic day with Jamie on Saturday, Kerri and I decided we would take a peek out the 1A to see if we could find some carnivores. We anticipated that the plows would have the roadways clear so shoveling shouldn't be necessary:)
Our first encounter was with this mature bull elk.

Our next critter on 1A was this nice Whitetail buck. There was a rental motor home stopped and three guys from France were already capturing images.

Don't let the smaller antlers on this buck fool you. This is quite a large mature buck. It just takes a look at the relative size of his ears  and the blunt shape of his face to tell you that this is a large mature buck.

The smaller antlers on this buck are primarily due to two fundamentals; genetics and quality of feed. Pine needles serve much less nutrition than the grains that his country cousins have access to.

Unfortunately this was the extent of the wildlife available to us on this day on 1A. So we headed over to Canmore for a secondary run hoping to add to our opportunities. Passing through Banff we thought with the nice sun present we should be stop and grab a couple of images of "the airport herd".

I thought that this "family" made an interesting shot. I particularly like the young calf in the lower left. Here is another image that shows how worried the little critter is with our presence.

Our secondary run was not providing many more targetrs than our primary. I was surprised at the total lack of birds; large and small.  We did manage to find this beautiful cow moose feeding in one of the parking areas.

It always amazes me that these large ungulates seem to prefer the shade, you would think that they would be sun worshippers at this time of year. Now that we are higher in the mountains you can see that the snow depth is quite a bit deeper than it is down on the flats.

One of the great things about here in Alberta, and the mountains in particular, when the game is scarce we still have beautiful vistas!  We spotted the moon in the sky and looked for an opportunity to capture it in the blue sky.

I don't do many landscapes so I thought I would try a moonscape :)  there is no question that we had great  light today. I will use the brisk winds that we were experiencing as the main reason that we didn't see much.

I hope that you had the chance to put some wild in your life on the weekend.
Turbo

Short-eared Owl supplemental (20141129) Some shots of a cooperative bird

As promised here is a supplemental post of just the Short-eared Owl. We were on the phone with Kerri when I spotted this bird and had to hang up. We back up about a 100 yards and first shot this bird in a tree- a first for me.

We watched for a few minutes and deided to hunt. We watched as it made two dives and came up empty. Next it was quite a distance down the road when it went to ground and seemed to stay for a bit. Jamie said it looked like it was eating. We decided to move up the road and see if we could get a better look.
We found him in the field right beced the road, pulled up and turned the truck off. It made a couple of moves and then started to fly again. It just popped up on the fence post right beside the truck, what a break! A little fluff, and the best look I have ever had a pair of Short-eared Owl's legs.

It took a minute or two for it settle down, with another "fluff" or two.

Here is a look of how they normally look sitting on a fence post. 

Our eight minutes with this terrific subject provided us with a peek into their fabulous personalities. i am ceertainly happy he wasn't looking at me like this; "you want some of this?"

Here it is doing a "Quasimodo" imitation. This bird is hilarious.

Here it is using the back side of its talons to brush the frost off of its face. You can see little specks of frost falling to the ground on the right of the image.

It did seem a little interested in all the camera clicking coming from the truck! It wold occasionally peek over to see what we were up to. Don't you love the heart shaped face?

And now for a couple of flight shots, the only cropped image here except the first shot.

What a super encounter with a very cooperative subject! I am always amazed how the length of this birds wings in relation to its body length. They look quite a bit like a bat when they fly. 

I'll wrap this up with a cropped portrait, I hope you enjoy!

Put some Wild in your life this weekend!

Turbo

Short-eared and Snowy owls (20141129) A slow morning leads to a day that ends with a bang!

It seems like just about everyone took last weekend off for one reason or another, so Jamie was up for a Snowy owl hunt. The morning started as usual, an early morning and a stop for some breakfast and on the road while it was still dark. We had some pretty heavy cloud cover so I thought we could do a west to east then north run for the day, unless we happened to get very busy. By the way did I mention it was about -33C with wind chill? Some early morning Grey Partridge were our first sighting, it was still pretty dark so the images are acceptable for posting. With the cold weather we were reluctant to do any "stop, drop, and roll" but a group of Horned Larks provided an opportunity so we were out of the truck, and on the ground in the cold weather.

These birds wre no where near as accomodating as those from a couple of weeks ago. Next up was this Coyote, it was in our little badger area from acouple of weeks ago.

We were pretty dry on the owl front until 11:00 a.m. then we ran into a hot spot and found 5 inside an hour. This is the most cooperative of the subjects.

As you can see, our heavy cloud burned off to some low cloud an then into clear blue skies, terrific conditions for finding these beacons of white. On a creek bed we almost simultaneously spotted these Grey Partridge soaking in the sun and staying out of wind.

I thought I would throw in a second shot of these colourful birds as our first encounter didn't provide any good results.

As we had planned we headed north and found this bird on a cross in a cementry. I am hoping Jamie might add an image that represented the scene better. I liked this in-flight shot, it gives yet another indication of how close to the ground these birds like to fly.

Thinks were really starting to pick up and we were finding these majestic birds almost everywhere. Even on the TransCanada highway, if you took a little time to look you could spot them.

I think it is interested to watch how these birds are able to adapt to any man made structure and use it for their advantage. Here is a closer shot of the same bird.

Our next owl seemed to screaming, which is quite unusual as these birds are typically silent. Jamie is confident that he could hear it a high pitched screetch.

We were able to spy a couple more Snowy's on tall poles that provided no access. Our day count was adding up very nicely after a slower start.  As we swung back to the west with the sun lowering in the sky we spotted this gorgeous bird. This was the most cooperative Snowy of the day. It let us pull up, shoot, and we left it right where we found it. Not the most cooperative bird on the day though, more to come on that later.

We were very grateful for this bird spending some time with us and letting us be on our way without disturbing it. Our next bird is a little back lit, but I really like the image. You can see the frost/snow still on the barbed wire on this fence as well.

Next up was our most entertaining encounter of the day. I spotted this Short-eared owl in a tree (that in itself is a first for me), As we were watching it decided to do a little hunting. Long story short, it flew in very close to us and allowed us to grab some images. I will be doing a supplemental on this bird soon.

As we left this bird, just a couple of hundred yards up the road Jamie spotted a Badger, our second of the year already. We didn't manage to grab any images though, it popped into a snow covered culvert and we weren't going to disturb it any further. Our last Snowy of the day, making number 15 for our trip and an owl total of 16 was this beautiful bird.

So a new personal record day for both Jamie and I for owl totals, and inspite of the cold weather, a fabulous day. Put some wild in your life soon. A supplemental of the Shorty will be up shortly.
Turbo

I want to thank Jamie for the shot of my truck from today. We had been "drift surfing" in the morning and even had been stuck in the drifts or a while. If you look close you can see where snow has stuck to the very top of the windshield. The front end is packed up tight with snow from blasting through the drifts.

I love that the truck performed like a warrior today!