Sunburst near our mystery owl

After nine days at home, making sure my stitches from minor surgery healed properly, an invitation by friends Cathy and Terry to go birding yesterday (7 March 2014) was welcomed with open arms - as it always is! What a great day we had, searching SE of the city, and finding some really neat birds. Most were impossible to photograph because of distance, but also because we had "heat waves" all day long, making it difficult to get photos that were sharp. It was one of THOSE days, out of the house from 7:15 a.m. to about 8:15 in the evening. By the end of the day, we had seen a total owl count of 19, from three species - 8 Short-eared Owls, 8 Snowy Owls, 2 Great Horned Owls and one mystery owl. We couldn't decide if the latter was a Snowy Owl or a Short-eared Owl, when viewed through binoculars or camera zoom, as it was perched on top of the metal silo that you see in this image, way off in the distance. The coloured spots from the sunburst lead ones eye to it. We missed a good photo opp with one of the Short-eared Owls, when we were pulled over, further down a road than several other photographers. We did see one down on the ground near the edge of the road in a different place, hiding in the dried grasses, but, again, my photo is blurry.

The beautiful Great Horned Owl, seen in one of my photos posted today, was the highlight of the day for Cathy and myself! Cathy had spotted it from the road but from the opposite side of the distant barn. All she had seen was a tiny head silhouette with what looked like ear tufts : ) We turned a corner and drove just a little way to see if we could get a better view from the other side. How we longed to be able to get a closer look, but the barn was on someone's private property, of course. While we were there, a truck suddenly appeared around the corner and turned into the driveway of the farm. Needless to say, we couldn't resist the chance to go and ask the owner about his owl and, wonderfully, he allowed us to walk through his farm yard to get a less distant view. So, Justin, you arrived home "just-in" time for us! Thanks so much for happily letting us on to your property. It was so much appreciated. We definitely didn't want to risk disturbing the owl or make it fly - so the shot is a 48x zoomed image and cropped somewhat. We loved both the owl's position and the beautiful, red, peeling paint! "Just" a Great Horned Owl, but what a delightful sight!

Also saw a Gyrfalcon and lots of Horned Larks - the latter constantly in flight or down on the road ahead of us. The "heat waves" made it impossible to get anything but rather blurry shots of these, but I might be able to slightly improve one of them enough to post later.

As you will no doubt agree, an amazing day (but colder day than the weather forecast had said!)! Thanks so much, Cathy and Terry, for another rewarding day (which had started off rather slowly down in that area). Lots of fun!