Gyrfalcon, Moose, Horses (20140118) A morning run South

With some mild weather over the passed few days and the snow settling Sheldon wanted to get out to see if we could find a few antlers that had been shed by the ungulates. He also swore me to secrecy as he was going to take me a new spot he found.  He guaranteed that I would see moose in this area and he produced! Anyone who knows wildlife knows that you cannot guarantee its presence:)
Here is a very early morning shot of a bull crossing a fence. This is just one of 16 moose we found in Sheldon's "honey hole".

Most of the moose we found were "antlerless" but we believed that many of them were bulls, indicating we might find some "sheds" later in the morning. We cruised our hunting area and found another 8 or 9 moose, and with the windy conditions every moose reacted the same, they ran! We walked our targeted valley and found no sheds but another 8 or moose, so our numbers for the day were over 30 moose, a personal best day for me. During our walk we encountered some of the local horses.

I am pretty happy with these as they were shot on the run, and I was manually focusing. Here is another in full flight.

Beautiful animals, and they thankfully left us alone. Quite often a tame horse will start to follow you as you walk, they may even start to nudge you in the back:)
On our drive home we spotted this beauty, only y second Gyrfalcon ever.

Sorry for the poor environment with all the barbed wired and cables, but I shoot them where I find them. These birds can be quite cooperative at times (or so I am told) but this fellow had his face in the wind and was looking like he was going to leave any instant.  Please forgive for posting a second shot, but this is a beautiful looking predator, and I want to really remember the brief encounter.

In order to better represent the size of this bird here it is on top of a telephone pole.

These last two shots are cropped pretty hard, but I believe they are of decent quality that they stand up to the cropping :)  That wrapped up our Saturday morning as far as photo opps provided. Over all a fabulous day. Drop by Calgary, maybe we can have a fabulous day together.

Turbo