Hows about some owls?

Now that it's warm outside again, I thought I'd do a post about the owls I've visited this past winter.

Brian and I took a trip to lovely Minnesota at the coldest time of the year this winter and endured -30 degree temperatures and -70 degree winds and snow up to our chest to find owls and boreal birds that we would never get to see in good-old relatively warm Pennsylvania.

We stayed in a cabin a stone throw away from Sax-Zim bog, which is a place known for its' abundance (2-4) of Great Gray Owls and Northern Hawk Owls. It also has several feeder stations set up and kept by private individuals which are great places to see other boreal birds including:

Boreal chickadee

Pine grosbeak


Gray Jay

Northern Shrike

And of course, the ubiquitous chickadees (black capped or carolina who knows)

But, back to the owls.
There were a couple Northern hawk owls hanging out in the area
 

I was lucky enough to get this guy hovering. Usually they would sit up on the tippy top of the highest tree in the area and just sit there. Not much help for taking pictures.

 And then there's an exception to every rule..... this one decided to perch on the most flimsy thing around. How is this owl standing on this tiny stick??

During the trip, I took a class with a professional photographer on owls. The best things I learned were to mind your background and setting, as well as 'pump the shutter' which is really helpful for keeping focus on moving targets. We worked with some willing models and some unwilling, and I came away better skilled at bird in flight (BIF) techniques and some awesome pictures.

We watched this snowy owl hunt its' favorite field and got a lot of cool shots as she flew by us and around the farm.

Her favorite perch was this old fence post, which was a really nice way to know where to set up, and also offered a great setting for photos.

There were some grasses coming out of the snow as well

All the snow around made for a great boreal setting

Here she is coming back to her fence post

After she was done posing for us, we went to check out a local red-phase screech owl but he wasn't as compliant and all we came away with was a picture of his hideout

No owls here :(

 The next day we went out we tried for Great Grays. Armed with my new BIF knowledge it made getting these elusive birds much easier (so only very hard instead of extremely hard) to get. But, luckly we had enough sightings of owls to come away with some great shots eventually!

One of the secrets to getting these owls is they prefer cloudy mornings with no wind. The first 3 days we were up at the bog we didn't see a single Great Gray. Then we saw one which was immediately scared off by someone speeding by in their car. The next day we went looking it was sunny but calm, so we saw 3 (two sightings probably the same owl) in a total of 8 hours. It was a bad day for Grays but I did come away with a couple.

The next day was the last day of our trip and we were SUPER LUCKY!!! It was overcast, snowing, and no wind at all! Perfect weather for the owls! We saw 5 sightings of Grays, probably only 2-3 individual owls, but that offered a lot of chances to photograph them. And they didn't care a single bit that we were there. One even perched on a tree for 10-20 minutes!

These guys, although very large (24-33 inches with 53.9–60.2 in wingspan), can hide so well. Look how well these guys are camouflaged

And of course, this was my favorite image of the trip.. really really lucky to get this one!!

(Disclosure: I missed almost half his right wing when I took this picture. I had to use the previous picture's wing to put into this one.. the previous picture was unfocused so I couldn't use it.)


All in all (or should I say "owl in owl") my hubby and I had an excellent time in the arctic tundra of Minnesota. It was beautiful there, as it always is, even in the winter.

A very owly winter

As my friends and family know, I've been a very busy photographer since November and the owls have come out. I've spent nearly every weekend away from home looking for owls to photograph! This is the first year I've been able to find so many, since my birding friends have kept me up-to-date on recent sightings and local hangouts for owls.

This guy here, a Barred Owl, only lives about 15 minutes away from me! Here he is peeking out of a hole he likes to hide in.

Here he is again in the snow, looking sleepy.

There's two trees he hangs out at during the months of November to March along the Beach Road in Crooked Creek State Park.. This one with the hole he's been at more recently, but there's another one I've seen him in earlier in the year. Here are some of the first pictures I've taken of him in the other tree..

Not as photogenic of a perch I must say. Many branches in the way that you kinda have to find the spot where they're out of focus enough so you can get a good view of him.

Anyway, he's one of two barred owls in the park, I heard them making monkey sounds at each other one night. Here's a video of the sound they make (Not my video!)

I also heard them calling individually and I'm surprised as to how distinguishable they are! The one has a shorter, matter-of-fact call. "Who cooks for you. Who cooks for you all." The other has a longer and more syllable-stressed call, more of a "Who COOKS for YOU who COOKS for you alllllllllllll.."

Here's a recording of the second one that I took..

It's so cool to have an owl living so close to my house! One that I never knew about for all the years I've lived here!

Birding from my bed

I've been working on a post from my birding experience from this past Labor Day weekend, but I did some unexpected birding last night, that was quite interesting, so I'm going to skip ahead for the moment...


Last night at 3:00 am the cat half woke me up when she jumped on the bed. Then I heard this hoo-hoo..
I sat up and grabbed Brian's shoulder "Did you hear that?? Listen! Shh! ..................................... ........................................ I swear I heard an owl! ......................... ..................................... ............. It was a great horned! ........................... ...................................... ................... Maybe I just dreame-" hoo-hoohoo hooo-hooo "Did you hear it?! It IS a great horned owl! Right outside!"

The next words out of his mouth were why I love him so much.. "Do you want to go look for it?"

YES!

So we jumped out of bed, grabbed a flashlight, my phone (it has owl calls on it!), and shoes and ran outside to where the owl was hooting. It was just across the street in a small patch of trees on my neighbor's property. We just stood there in awe as we listened to it sing.

Then we tried to find it, shining the flashlight about where it was, and calling him with my ibird app. We must have startled it, because then I heard him across the next street up on the hill. I knew it wouldn't stick around long anyway, because there are just a few sparse trees around the neighborhood, nothing the size of habitat it needed to survive, so we followed him. We got right up to the patch of trees he was in again, and listened. Then we tried the flashlight again and this time he didn't fly off, but continued hooting. We couldn't find it though. So we circled up around to the other side of the tree patch and as soon as we got within 15 feet of him, he flew off across the road again and farther away, hooted once, and then took off out of hearing range. We never saw him once.

Oh well, I was just happy to have heard an owl, and a great horned owl was a real treat in my town. We went back to the house talking excitedly as we walked "He was RIGHT THERE!" "I can't believe it!" "That's the first time I've heard a great horned owl!" "Too bad we couldn't see him"

We went to bed, but I was too excited to fall back to sleep too quickly and kept an ear open in case he came back. But he didn't.

As I finally started drifting off to sleep I hear this bark-y screech a few times. I turned to Brian "Are you still awake? Do you hear that?" "Yeah, what is it?" "I think it's a screech owl! Or I guess it could be a raccoon or something." then I hear it's distinctive thrill call. "It's definitely a screech owl!!"
This owl was right about the same patch of trees the great horned was in when we heard him the first time. I was surprised, especially since great horneds sometimes will prey on screechys.
We didn't get out of bed, for this one only called a few times then we didn't hear him again. Plus we both had work in the morning.

I wasn't expecting on doing any birding that night, and it's still a bit early for owls to be calling. I can't wait to go looking for them during the day while they're breeding!!


As a quick note, this morning when I dropped Brian off at work, a red tailed hawk called his signature call and flew about 20 feet above us. How cool!!

Below are pictures (not my own) of a great horned owl and a screech owl

Great Horned Owl image from

http://thebatavian.com/jimnigro

Eastern Screech Owl image from Wikipedia