Great Gray Owl in the early morning light

Getting up really early is always so hard for me to do. I'm a night owl with atrocious sleep habits, so getting out of bed at 5:00 a.m. (alarm was set for 4:15 a.m., though!) was not my favourite way to start the day on 25 March 2013. Funny, when I have to meet friends for various early-starting trips, I can so it (but don't like it), but when I go off on my own, there is no deadline to meet, and I just never get round to doing it. I headed NW of the city, wanting to see if time of day made any, or much, difference to seeing wildlife. Who really knows? I have seen these beautiful birds of prey at all sorts of times of the day, but of course the light was different. This one must have plunged into the mix of dried grass and snow fairly recently, as it still had that long piece of grass hanging from its chin. Wasn't sure whether to remove it or not - it's in quite a few photos - but decided to leave it just as it was. Right decision, lol? I was also lucky enough to see three other Great Gray Owls, my first Mountain Bluebird of the year (always such a wonderful flash of brilliant blue), a Pileated Woodpecker, and an American Robin (always takes me by surprise when I see a Robin out in the middle of nowhere). A beautiful female Ruffed Grouse helped make my day, too. Guess I can say I was definitely rewarded for getting up so early, even though I might have seen all, or most, of these birds later in the day, too : )

Flickr is acting up again (at least for some of us). Have not yet been able to add any tags to this image this morning. I've cleared my cache and restarted my computer, but still the same. Also, when I clicked on the Nuthatch photo I posted today, I happened to notice that the row of tiny thumbnail photos in the top, right corner (below map) showed the image surrounded by other photos that were taken on the same date ages ago, and not surrounded by my most recent photos. Never seen that happen before. Very strange. Also, some people are having problems - yet again - with photos not showing up on their Contacts Home Page, and I suspect this is happening with mine, again.