I love watching these majestic birds and I’m always happy when they share a few minutes of their time with me! I particularly love it when I get to see them in the soft light of the early morning. Because of the very early sunrise at this time of year, that means getting up very early. Unfortunately that hasn’t worked out very often for me lately, so I have to make the best of those days that I do get out early.
I was very excited to find a family of Great Horned Owls in Fish Creek Provincial Park, including two juveniles. The owlets were flapping their wings and hopping around from branch to branch. It appears that they can’t quite fly yet, but they’re definitely stretching their wings and getting ready to try!
Fish Creek Provincial Park is massive and there are birds and animals all over the park. From squirrels to coyotes, to White-tailed deer. Great Horned Owls are just one of the many very common birds in the park. There really are lots of them, and I hear reports about them all the time. Having said that, I’m always amazed when I do actually find one, and I have been extremely unsuccessful in the past. In fact I made over 9 trips to Shannon Terrace and Bebo Grove last spring searching for Northern Pygmy Owls, and I never saw even one. It became a running joke with my wife because every time she joined me one one of those trips it snowed. The visibility was usually so poor that we could have walked by a whole flock of owls and we wouldn’t have seen them.
But my luck is much better at the East end of the park near Sikome Lake and Hull’s Wood. I’ve seen owls in that area several times and so I’m not really surprised anymore when I do. Always excited, but not surprised!!
Here are a few more images of the young owlets perching and stretching their wings.
I’m always get very excited when I see a perching hawk somewhere close enough to make a nice portrait, and even though I have hundreds of similar images, I always have to stop to try to make another one!
More often than not hawks fly away as soon as they sense that I’m even thinking about pointing my camera at them; however, every once in a while, one will actually cooperate and allow me to take a few shots before it flies. This Swainsons actually sat and watched me very intently from its perch at the top of a power pole for a few minutes (and gave me some very nice poses) before launching…
This is just a preview of 100’s of images I made this morning at my friends house. The eggs in the Blue Jay nest that I was invited to see last week hatched this week! My friends invited me back to see the babies in action. Mom and Dad were steadily coming back with their mouths full of food for the nestlings and I was able to get an extreme close-up (bird’s eye) view!
I was visiting a friends house today and discovered that they have a pair of Bluejays nesting in their backyard. I immediately sat down to watch and take some pictures. It was very cool to watch! There was always one bird on the nest while the other was off hunting. Every so often the hunter would return to share its meal with the nesting bird.
