Snowy Owl and pellet

Towards the end of last year, I had been longing to get out to look for Snowy Owls, especially to the E and NE of the city. I finally got out, after my youngest daughter asked if I wanted to go looking for Snowies on our Christmas get-together on 20 December 2014. She had never seen a Snowy Owl, so I was really, really hoping that we'd find one! As it turned out, we saw 10 definite individuals, plus two others that we weren't quite sure about - one certainly looked like a very distant Snowy and the other was possibly a repeat of an owl we had seen earlier in more or less the same area.

Part way through the day, almost as if it were meant to happen, a car came from the opposite direction - it was my friends, Cathy and Terry! For the rest of our trip, we followed behind them, thoroughly enjoying every new find. Late afternoon, we went home different ways and my daughter and I saw our last two owls. My daughter was so thrilled to see all these breathtaking birds - she was quite happy and content after seeing the very first, distant one. Three of the owls gave us close or reasonably close views, the rest were very distant. The owl in this photo is either a female or young one, as it has so much dark streaking. It was the very last owl that we saw that day.

After these wonderful sightings, we returned to Calgary and went back to my daughter's place to exchange Christmas gifts. I reckon the Snowy Owls were the "best" gifts she received that day : )

www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/snowy_owl/lifehistory

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_owl