White, blues and browns of winter

Sorry, back to Owls again : ) Though many of the photos I take tend to be very similar, I do still have a lot of ones that I could add here. 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 is always different each time. 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 beak. Wasn't sure whether to remove it or not (with my very old version of PhotoShop Elements) - 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 : ) All about luck and timing.

HAPPY EARTH DAY, everyone! Hope at least some of you have been able to get outdoors to enjoy and appreciate the marvels of nature today. So many good things are being done by many people in all sorts of ways to improve our planet. Not sure if this all balances out with all the negative things that are being done by other people. Important things to think about on Earth Day - but we also need to be thinking about them every day, too.