Horse on the prairie

Yesterday, 12 February 2015, was spent SE of the city, with friends Cathy and Terry. They picked me up around 7:00 am and I think I was home somewhere around 7:30 pm, after a great day of searching for owls, barns, and anything else that caught our eye. As you can see from this photo, the weather was beautiful, despite the cloud layer. The reason we stopped at this farm was that we had noticed a cat sitting on a barn roof - usually we only see pigeons : ) The temperature reached a brief high of 13C around 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm, which felt so good, especially for mid-winter. This shot is highly zoomed, so the mountains really are not as close as they seem to be, nor was the horse. I love the days that I'm in this area when the mountains are reasonably clear. Often, they look very hazy (as in this shot) and sometimes they disappear completely.

Many of the roads we travelled along were roads that I had driven on myself, some of them a number of times. A few of the roads were new to me, which was a treat, including a "trail" that was so deeply rutted and snow-covered that I'm amazed that we ever got out of there! This track and another backroad that was new to me led to a few old barns that I really appreciated being shown. I think my friends were amused that I fell asleep on this very rough track - after only an hour and a half's sleep the previous night, on top of always being very sleep-deprived, I'm really not surprised. It's strange how some fields in the whole area were more or less bare and yet others had a lot of snow covering the stubble, with piles of snow lining the edges of the road.

As far as wildlife was concerned, we saw 11 owls - 8 Snowy Owls and 3 Great Horned Owls. The Snowies, other than the one perched on the "Wrong Way" sign that I posted today, were all extremely distant, so my photos are of white specks in a nice setting, ha. If I hadn't been with two people who can spot "everything", I'm sure that I would never have found most of these owls! One of the Great Horned Owls gave us a lovely view, although not close, with no branches getting in the way. Loved hearing it calling to its mate, who was presumably tucked into one of the neighbouring trees.

Other birds included a flock of Snow Buntings, plus two individuals that were perched on a fence - haven't checked yet to see if I have a sharp enough photo. We had to deal with a lot of heat distortion during the day, so some photos are far from sharp. Another bird we saw was a beautiful Falcon perched on an electricity pylon - not a large bird, so presumably a Prairie Falcon, not a Gyrfalcon. Wild animals included a distant Red Fox that ran across the road, and a small herd of Mule Deer.

Many thanks, as always, Cathy and Terry, for a great day out, including the delicious chili you made and brought along. Fun and rewarding! Really appreciated being with you, doing what we all enjoy so much. Thanks, too, for giving me time to photograph the various barns we came across!