December 8
Good Morning
Yesterday seemed a good day to go looking for. Owls. The forecast was for -20°C in the morning rising to -4°C in the afternoon.
So I left home at 7 am and drove over to Sherwood Park to pick up my friend Kelly. We headed north of Edmonton about one hour, arriving at the owl area just as the sun was rising. Alas, we couldn’t find any owls. Our friend Jim and Karen joined in the hunt but we still had no luck. Kelly and I headed over to Newbrook to check out the birds there. We discovered Pine Grosbeaks, Evening Grosbeaks, Canada Jay and Blue Jays but they were all in an inaccessible back yard.
We decided to head over to the Westlock area with Jim and Karen. They headed east and we went north to Cross Lake. Kelly and I spent some time tramping through the snow to try to get a shot of a cow calf and moose in the bush but they moved off before we could get lined up. We headed over to find Jim and Karen to see if they were more successful.
When we got in that area, they called us. They had been trying to reach us for an hour but we were out of cell range. They had found a Great Grey Owl! We were close, so we joined them. The sun had already gone down so there were plenty of challenges getting the images. I was shooting at very slow shutter speeds and very high ISO to capture the owl. A full moon started peaking out through the clouds so we tried to get the owls and moon lined up but we didn’t quite make it. We then started shooting in the dark, capturing the owl against the last fading light in the western sky.
It was completely dark when we left and headed home. I drove Kelly back to Sherwood park and got home at 8 pm, 13 hours and over 500 kms later. Kelly’s first sighting if a Great Grey Owl and some interesting images to capture the day or more correctly night!
Stay Well
