Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: Northern Hawk Owl'

It has been almost four years since many of us were fortunate enough to make visits to a family of Northern Hawk Owls, NW of Calgary. I was so thrilled to see this adult yesterday, again NW of the city. It's a one and a half hour drive for me to get there, so not a drive I care to do very often - roughly 220 km round trip. Great to see a few familiar faces up there, too : ) It was like a spring day yesterday, sunny, pleasant and not cold. I really wanted to get over there before we get our next snowfall and yesterday seemed a perfect day to go. There were three or four cars parked at the side of the road when I arrived at the area and everyone let me know that the owl had been close to the road just before I arrived, but had now disappeared way across a huge field. Never words one wants to hear, lol! However, I was assured it would be back - and that is what happened. "The type of prey the Hawk-Owl catches will determine its eating strategy. For mammalian prey the ritual is generally the same: the Northern Hawk-Owl will eviscerate its prey, eats the head first (especially for prey like the red squirrel, whose head is fairly large), and then—when tackling larger prey—it will eat the organs and cache the remains; with smaller prey, the owl will simply swallow the body whole." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Hawk-Owl "The Northern Hawk Owl can detect prey by sight at a distance of up to 800 meters (half a mile). Though it is thought to detect prey primarily by sight, the Northern Hawk Owl can find and seize prey under 30 cm (1 foot) of snow." From AllAboutBirds. www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/northern_hawk_owl/lifehistory

Another photo from my archives, taken on 3 June 2012, of the beautiful Northern Hawk Owlet that gave so many people tremendous pleasure. This little family was NW of Calgary, about an hour and a half's drive each way. 28 May 2012 was this owlet's very first time out of the nest, so this photo was taken on its sixth day of freedom. It was such an adorable little thing. Did you all know that you can now hover your mouse over the date the image was taken and you will see the date it was posted? This was one of yesterday's changes - a good change. A few hours later, another change occurred - you can no longer click on the three dots to edit tags, only the date and time. You can still do it using the organizer, but that is more complicated. This change I definitely don't like. Have fun, everyone! I wonder what changes today will bring! Guess I've just found out what the next "mess" is! I've just opened a second browser window for Flickr and found that there is nothing on this black panel - no description, tags, sets, groups, no three dots. Late last night, a friend (in England) told me that this was happening to her, and now it has reached us here. Hopefully, this is just a temporary glitch - thankfully, it does seem to be ... so far.. It's 11C this afternoon and thundershowers are in the forecast, turning to snow flurries tonight and tomorrow. So why did we foolishly think that maybe spring had finally arrived, lol? flic.kr/p/mZGYmt