Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: explore2014March16

Though this is a fairly plain barn, I always enjoy seeing it. Each time I see it, it has a Pigeon sitting in a different window. Photographed on 13 March 2014, when I went SE of Calgary for the day with friends Cathy and Terry.

These are attractive little birds, but not easy to photograph, as they rarely seem to stand still, are too far away, or the "heat wave" distortion is really bad. We were lucky with this one and his "girlfriend" (or vice versa), as they both flew to where we had pulled over and stopped the car. It was fun to watch their courtship flight antics, too. Seen on 13 March 2014, when friends Cathy and Terry and I went SE of Calgary for the day.

This image was partially zoomed in (full is 48x), so the mountains look closer than they really are. Spent the whole day SE of the city again on 13 March 2014, with friends Cathy and Terry. What a slow day it was for much of the time. Took us just over 6 hours to find the first Snowy Owl - just the tiniest, distant white speck on the ground, far across a huge field. We were beginning to wonder if maybe all the Snowies had already left to fly north, so we were happy to see this one, and a second one about four hours later, perched on a distant power pole. No photo opportunities for these owls, but it felt to good to know that there were at least these two owls still in the area. We had no luck at all finding a Short-eared Owl - very different from 7th March, when we saw 8 of them, six in flight and two on the ground. In addition to the 2 Snowies, we did see 9 Great Horned Owls, though, some on nests. Weather was beautiful with some interesting clouds for part of the day, clearing much later. We were just in time to see the last of the pink sunrise colour and light on the distant mountains - always so beautiful. Some of the fields looked pretty bare, while others were still covered in snow. The "heat-wave" distortion was really bad all day long, making good, clear shots impossible.