Local Snowy

While temperatures this last week have been typically wintry here in southern Ontario, the lack of snowfall hereabouts is perhaps less typical. This does have its advantages though; scanning brown, deadened fields for Snowy Owls is much easier than squinting across barren, frozen wastes. Such was the case yesterday, when I drove a few minutes up the road to check out some local fields for raptors and other winter denizens. Almost as soon as I turned off the main road, a white blob caught my eye. Always wary of plastic bags and buckets, I honed in on it with my bins and waited for a movement that would confirm it as an animate object, it duly obliged.

I continued on my loop and bagged a pale Rough-legged Hawk, two sub-adult male Northern Harriers floating about together and a handful or two of Red-tailed Hawks. When I returned three quarters of a hour later, the Snowy was in the same place, but looked shifty. Shortly it flew up into a nearby tree and sat, buffeted by the breeze, until I left.

The obligatory festive shot of some, none-too-worried looking, Wild Turkeys.