Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: interestingness#144

Position one of these Great Gray Owls right in front of a tree trunk and you will discover how amazing the camouflage is. Yesterday, I stood so that the owl was nicely framed by these two trees. It was along the edge of the forest, quite a distance away, and out of the sun - the colour of the feathers tends to look different when in the shade (a much darker brown). "Although the Great Gray Owl is the tallest American owl with the largest wingspan, it is just a ball of feathers. It preys on small mammals and has relatively small feet. Both the Great Horned and Snowy owls weigh half again as much, and have larger feet and talons. The oldest recorded Great Gray Owl was at least 18 years, 9 months old and lived in Alberta." From AllABoutBirds. www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Gray_Owl/lifehistory en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Grey_Owl It had been a week since I had last seen one of these owls, so I decided to drive there yesterday morning and see if one could be seen. When I arrived, three people had already found one - apparently, it had been sitting on a fence post moments before, but flew off into the far line of trees just as I was slowly arriving. Much as I am delighted to see an owl anywhere, along the edge of the trees is my least favourite place, as the owl is then in the shade. After a while, I decided to drive further along the road to see if there were any other owls to be seen, and when I returned, the handful of people were photographing one sitting on a fence post. I just managed to get three or four rather useless shots before it flew off to the forest.

Four of us did a bio-assessment of a new area in the northwest part of the city - or, more accurately, three of us did that while I took photos, LOL! The name of the trail is Bearspaw Lasso Trail. We had an interesting experience - that of being swooped at by a Swainson's Hawk. In fact, it also swooped down on two occasions VERY close to my head while I was taking photos and separated from the others in the group. There were two of these Hawks and I guess they must have had a nest somewhere in the area. Thanks for driving us, Doug, and introducing us to this new area!

Wow - almost blinded myself with such bright colour after so many dull grey days recently! Yes, I bought myself another small bouquet of flowers to enjoy. If I'm correct, this is a Gerbera Daisy.