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.
![](http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/9280/200904181.jpg)
Cloudy but a dry afternoon.
![](http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6982/200904183.jpg)
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.
![](http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/2211/200904184e.jpg)
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!
![Rufous Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus)](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3570/3454051545_f84daf6a63.jpg)
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.
![American Robin (Turdus migratorius)](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3336/3454053353_275d4d9e51.jpg)
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!
.
5 comments:
What an awesome beauty that Great Horned Owl is ! Those wonderful blue skies in the previous post show what an amazing place you're living in.
Wow the hummingbird picture is awesome. This is a beautiful bird and you captured it very well. I love this red-winged blackbird too, it is so cute.
I've only seen an owl a couple of times in my life. Lucky you to get as good a shot as you did. I'm sure we have owls in our area but I've not seen any evidence ... I keep looking.
That first picture is amazing. So is the owl
Thank you all!
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