Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: house?

This morning, I just had time to edit and post three photos before dashing out to meet friends so that we could cover our area for Fish Creek Provincial Park's New Year's Day Bird Count. A beautiful day with blue sky and sunshine, but, oh, excruciatingly COLD! A nasty kind of cold that gave us cold feet despite wearing winter boots that are supposed to go down to -40C. So cold that our cameras wouldn't work much of the time. The birds had more sense than humans - they mainly stayed hidden. We only saw 7 species of birds in three hours of walking. This extreme cold is just brutal! Three bitterly COLD, day-long, out-of-the-city Christmas Bird Counts have been more than enough and it's a bit of a relief that the Fish Creek Park Count is also now out of the way. What does the weather go and do now? It finally warms up and will be around normal seasonal temperatures for at least the next few days. A video from the Weather Network website, showing how cold it is in Calgary right now: www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/videos/gallery/watch-this-ho... This photo was taken three days ago, on 29 December 2017, when four of us (using just one car) took part in the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count for the Cochrane Wildlife Reserve area. I'm not sure why it's called Wildlife Reserve, as it consists of back roads and farms just like on our other Counts. The area we covered (right on the east edge of the count circle) was east of Highway 22/Cowboy Trail. The first evidence of any wildlife for me, first thing in the morning, was a Jackrabbit that was nibbling on snow-covered plants right outside our leader's house. Of course, at 7:15 in the morning, it was still dark. One of my favourite things to photograph on this annual Count are the Llamas at one of the farms.. This farmer has several of these large, amusing animals, and they are always one of the highlights of this Count for me. I'm not sure how many Llamas they have - somewhere around 7? Most of these animals were given to them by other farmers who no longer wanted them. "Llamas appear to have originated from the central plains of North America about 40 million years ago. They migrated to South America and Asia about 3 million years ago. By the end of the last ice age (10,000–12,000 years ago) camelids were extinct in North America. As of 2007, there were over 7 million llamas and alpacas in South America and, due to importation from South America in the late 20th century, there are now over 100,000 llamas and 6,500–7,000 alpacas in the US and Canada." From Wikipedia. The photogenic old shed/house in this photo is always a favourite of mine, on the edge of the forest and just a short distance from the landowners own bungalow. We usually see several species of bird here, but on Count day, all was mostly quiet. Another of my favourite farms to stop at has a beautiful, old dog named Fang, along with beautiful cats, and I always look forward to seeing them each year. This day, though, with a temperature of -23C all day (windchill probably at least -30 to 35C), cats stayed indoors. I caught a brief glimpse of just one cat outside. The neighbouring farm, which is also included in our area, has two beautiful old, red barns and I was longing to see these again. Unfortunately, no one was home, so we couldn't search the farmyard, but I did get the chance to take two rapid shots through the trees of one of the barns, from a side view. Another farm we stopped at had beautiful Pine Grosbeaks and Common Redpolls coming to a feeder. A joy to see these splashes of colour in a very cold, white, white world. So, it was a very enjoyable day, though there were not all that many species or individual birds to be seen. Too cold and too much snow to spend much time searching various farmyards, and we had finished the Count by 2:30 pm. I will add a list of the bird species seen, in a comment box below. Many thanks, Dave, for driving us. You did a great job of handling roads that were not in the greatest condition, and it was greatly appreciated. The light was awful all day, and it was so difficult to see where the ditch was and where one road turned off to another. There is no way I would ever try driving on our back roads in such weather! Also, a huge thank-you to the various landowners who were kind enough to allow us to wander round their farmyards. These visits make our day so much more interesting and fun!

This photo was taken on 2 April 2016, NW of the city. It had been a week since I had last driven to this area, so I decided to drive there again and see if I could find a Great Gray Owl. When I arrived, three people had already found a Great Gray Owl - 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 shots before it flew off to the forest. Later, about half way home, I drove along a couple of backroads that I had driven once (or twice) before. Almost missed this old barn, as the colour matched the early spring, brown colours of the setting.