Barred Owl beauty

The morning of 23 October 2014 started really well. I found an e-mail from friend, Sandy, saying that they had just seen a Barred Owl in one of the local parks. Thanks to Sandy, I got over there just before noon and bumped into a few of my friends who had just finished a walk. Two of them said they would come with me and look for the owl again – and we found it!! This was the first 100% wild Barred Owl I’d ever seen. I had seen a family of them near Edmonton, when we went to see ones that had been banded. They were wild birds, but I still hoped to one day see a completely wild one (i.e. no nesting box). This owl was beautiful – crummy light, though, with a mix of harsh sunlight and dark shadows on the bird, but I did get a few that turned out OK, at least when seen at this size. This photo was taken before the owl flew down to the ground from one tree, was out of sight briefly, and then we saw it in a somewhat closer tree.

"The Barred Owl’s hooting call, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” is a classic sound of old forests and treed swamps. But this attractive owl, with soulful brown eyes and brown-and-white-striped plumage, can also pass completely unnoticed as it flies noiselessly through the dense canopy or snoozes on a tree limb. Originally a bird of the east, during the twentieth century it spread through the Pacific Northwest and southward into California." From AllAboutBirds.

www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Barred_Owl/id

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barred_owl

Straight from the park, I finally did a drive south of the city and found an old barn that I really wanted to see, plus a few others. The photos of this barn that I had found on the Internet must have been taken by trespassing, or possibly before a No Trespassing sign was placed there, as I could only get a view of the back of the barn from the road, lol! On this drive, and when looking at Google Earth the previous evening, I discovered that as well as having no sense of direction, I also have no sense of distance!

Then I went in search of two grain elevators joined together by a long, low building. The most northerly one is one of the oldest in Alberta (built in 1905 I think, but certainly before 1910). I had pulled over and parked, taken a few shots right into the sun unfortunately and was just checking them back in the car. I was conscious of a man in a bright orange sweater approaching close to my car. When he stopped by my car, I opened the door – he seemed a bit puzzled as to what I was doing there, so I explained that I was photographing the elevators. Ha, it was the private owner of the elevators!!! I read on the Internet just now that he has a furniture manufacturing company in the long, low building that joins the two elevators together. I asked him if there was a better place to photograph them, and he said to take the previous little road. Much better! Some nice old train cars parked near the elevators, too. Maybe I was parked on private ground when the owner was talking with me.

After the elevators, I explored a few other roads further south and ended up not far from The Saskatoon Farm. Called in and had quiche again : ) So, altogether, a pretty good day : )