The beauty of golden stubble

Never have I looked so tall and skinny, lol! How I love shadows, sometimes! No matter what I did, I couldn't lose my shadow.

On 25 January 2014, I spent an amazing day south of Calgary with friends Cathy and Terry. I had found an e-mail on my computer around 12:45 a.m., just as I was about to turn off my computer for the night. Did I want to go birding tomorrow and, if so, to meet at 8:00 a.m.? A full day of excitement and enjoyment left me tired out, but so happy. I had been missing being out and taking photos, feeling lethargic and extremely tired, so this invite was welcomed with open arms. The crazy weather soared to a balmy 11C, but a lot of the day was colder, with a strong wind! Along one of the roads, we stopped to photograph a barn and I couldn't resist taking a couple of shots of the sunlit stubble in the fields. The golden colour always looks so beautiful on a sunny day.

Can you believe that we saw 16 owls (oops, when I first posted this info under a previous photo, we thought we had seen 17, but after viewing all their photos and videos, my friends reckon that we "only" saw 16, ha). SIXTEEN! 8 Snowy Owls and 8 Great Horned Owls. The closest Snowy Owl was seen when it was early evening and the light had gone, and my photos are all blurry. The other owls were little more than a tiny speck in the far, far distance, but I still managed to get some kind of shot of some of them, using 48x zoom plus cropping. Perhaps I should add that maybe 15 of the owls that were seen would never have been seen by less experienced birders (and I include myself in that category!). My friends have brilliant eyes when it comes to spotting owls! Just left me shaking my head each time they found one! I'm not too bad at finding owls, but not at that distance!