Owl Prowl

On January 2nd, the last day of my Christmas break from work, middle daughter Annelise and I went out for an afternoon drive.  Anna's favorite animals are owls.  She loves them and has owl T-shirts, owl purses, owl figurines, and on and on... I learned on the weekend that she has never seen one in the wild... much to my surprise.  

So, on Monday afternoon we set out for a drive.  There was a little fresh snow, and it was very cold.  I think we hit an afternoon high of about -16C but for most of the day it was closer to -20C.  We passed through Elk Island National Park and continued on up into Lamont County.  For as cold as it was, there was surprisingly quite a bit of wildlife on the move.  We saw lots of ravens and magpies, as well as some snow buntings and a pileated woodpecker.  We saw a coyote, a deer, a cow moose with a yearling calf, and a herd of Wood Bison.  Of course the bison were in the National Park but all the others were not. 

I expected that we would likely see a snowy owl, perched on a telephone pole somewhere, but despite driving around for the entire afternoon, and keeping our eyes peeled, we did not.  But, much to Anna's delight we did see a Great Gray Owl.  As we passed through a stand of heavy trees beside the road I noticed the huge bird perched on a snag.  We stopped and watched it for quite a while and even managed to get a couple of snapshots.  Later we saw another large bird in the distance, flying over a snowy field.  It was too far away to be certain what it was.  It was definitely not a raven as the wings were very broad, and its flight was very different.  It might have been another owl... perhaps another grey or maybe a great horned.  It was dark in color so it was definitely not a snowy.  It was very large so it is possible that it might have been a bald eagle.  It was just too far away for us to be able to positively identify it.

At one point in the late afternoon I stopped along the road to take my first photograph of 2017 with the view camera.  The shot was pretty simple, just some hoar frost and tree trunks beside the road.  I was trying out my Nikkor 500mm telephoto lens with my Ebony camera.  In the past I have always used this lens with my older Sinar cameras and wanted to determine if the Ebony has enough bellows draw to use this long focal length.  It does, but when focusing on something relatively close, additional bellows draw is needed and the Ebony has just barely enough.  It only took me about 10 minutes to expose two sheets of film.  The controls of the view camera are small and delicate and can only be properly operated with bare hands.  Of course these same controls are all metal so needless to say, in these conditions, it is very cold on the hands.  I've tortured my hands like this for many years now and they just don't take it very well any more.  The skin on my thumb became hard as it began to freeze and the pain was excruciating as my hands warmed up upon my return into the cab of the truck.  Sure hope the image is worth it....