Advance research pays off! While this isn’t one of my best photographs of the Great Horned Owls that live near my home, I’m proud of the image for several reasons … a whole lot of research went into finding this bird.

• Recently it has been difficult to find my local owl family. Thus, I decided to think like an owl. I remembered that while cross-country skiing at night last winter, I would often hear the owls hooting at a particular spot on the ski trails. Yesterday afternoon I hiked to this area, and explored. In my humble opinion it looked “owly”, but I did not find any birds. The pine grove was extremely thick and dark even during the brightest part of a summer afternoon.
• This afternoon I returned and jackpot! I think this is the “Dad” of my local owl family. I took the photograph 5 minutes before a downpour hit (yes … got quite wet). The exposure time for this image was almost 1/2 second but thankfully owls will sit very still, and I had a monopod.

I knew my family of owls were still very much around. They actually woke both Molly and me up last night around 3 am. Long story short, there was a huge racket outside our bedroom window. I am convinced one of the parent had made a kill, and junior threw a temper tantrum when it did not get fed! The juvenile screeched extremely loudly at the top of the tree fifteen yards from our window. We could easily sit it. Like all youngster I finally realize the meal was not going to be provided, and it flew off to hunt on its own.

I also went up to Sax-Zim Bog yesterday morning where I found this family of Sandhill Cranes (two birds not in the picture)