Seeing an old friend, the Great Horned Owl

Today's a cloudy day, and for the first time in a long time, I carried out today's outing with a goal - to see the Great Horned Owl mentioned by Hugh (of Rock Paper Lizard) yesterday. The last time I saw a Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) was more 6 months ago in the summer, when I was starting to learn how to become a naturalist and a birder. While I was surprised by the sudden presence of the great bird, I was amazed by its beauty and grace. I guess you can call the deciding point of my future goal. Since that day, I have been traveling the same path everyday hoping to see it again. And as you can tell, I had no such luck...until yesterday when Hugh mentioned seeing the owl in his birding group. You can't imagine how exited I was reading that post - hoping I can see it for myself again.

Cloudy but a dry afternoon.

Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) hanging around under the feeder.

The star of this post - Great Horned Owl!!! Sleeping. And just like the situation menioned by Hugh yesterday, there was quite a few crows surrounding this tree cawing loudly. I can't imagine sleeping to that unpleasant noise. I didn't want to cause too much disturbance so I photographed from the distance by extending the zoom all the way to 800mm.

On my returning trip, it had changed its position, allowing me a better shot. But the crows were still around. I hope the crows don't bother it too much and I can continue to see this owl day after day. It's just such a magnificent animal!

On the way, I got lucky again and this male Rufous Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus) was perching on a tree along the trail. Such a neat looking bird.


On another tree, a calm American Robin was just a couple of metres away from me, and it didn't seemed to be flustered by all the walkers and dog-walkers, so I decided to snap a couple of shots.

Such a great day - mainly thanks to Hugh!
.