Short Eared, GHO's, Grey Partridge (20140301) An outstanding owl day!

Kerri arrived right on time at 6:30 for our cruise out to the same spot we visited last night hoping for an opportunity for some better opportunities. The -34C temperature and windchill of -42 would not deter us :) Our morning started with a what we believed to be a GHO nest, and we made a mental note to drive by later and confirm  Next was a Coyote that was hunting, and I believe was successful. when Kerri spotted this bird on a fence post. It held for a bit then it flew down into the grass and we were able to find it. It was just as the sun was coming up 7:21 a.m.

30 minutes later with a little more light and a beautiful sunrise coming on I was able to "lengthen" my lens and the frost on the face of this bird is very evident.

This bird had quite normally "found its spot" for the chilly morning and was very comfortable in staying put soaking up the sun. So we headed out, I wanted to share a GHO nest location with Kerri. Momma here almost looks like a cat.

We didn't find dad this time around so we thought we would come back in a bit and take another "driveby" to see if we could spot him. As we headed over to our number 3 SEO spot we found a couple of pairs of Grey Partridge and this might be my best effort yet on one of these birds.

Just up the road and around the bend Kerri spotted our 3rd GHO nest of the day. This one is a little higher than I am accustomed to finding them, but there it was.
Dad was a couple of trees down in there grove, and about 2/3 as high soaking in the sun. He was well out of the way, so no shots today.

We would find Snowy's here and there, but with the breeze they were kind of uncooperative. Typically on these kinds of day we will find one cooperative bird, and today this was it.

We decide to swing back by nest 2 and see if poppa was around anywhere, and sure enough he too was basking in the sun on this frigid morning.

Sitting in the sun soaking up the available heat produces a very poor opportunity for good eye shots :)  We believe that this white unit is the same bird that I shot last night after dark.

As we were wrapping up the morning run we thought we would drop in and see if our morning SEO was still there. I strongly believe that because we had given it room and did not get aggressive with it, we found it right where we left it 4 hours earlier. It was nice to see the frost had been baked off its face.

That wraps up a super Owl morning. we finished up with 13 owls in total, and headed off for gas and a bit of chow. Hope you enjoy the post!
Turbo