August 16
Connor and I went on an extended trip starting in Cypress Hills, then into Saskatchewan where we visited Grasslands National Park, Swift Current, Regina and Saskatoon.
Our main goal was to photograph Burrowing Owls. These small owl are endangered and one of the few places you can be almost guaranteed to always see them in Grasslands National Park in the southwest corner of Saskatchewan. We have visited there four time now and it is one of our favour places to go. Since we started going in 2015, the annual visitors has doubled from 10,000 to 20,000 people per year. That is what Banff gets in a busy day.
In addition to the serenity, it is one of the darkest places in North America , excluding the land in the north. Our visit this year coincided with a Dark Skies Festival and Connor got to look at nebula, galaxies, Saturns rings and Jupiter’s moons through the telescopes provided by the park.
We were successful in finding Burrowing owls. The park had a record number of breeding pairs this year. They use abandoned prairie dog or gopher holes as nests. The young ones were already flying when we got there, so we were able to get some flights shots as the hunted grasshoppers and bugs.
Stay well !
