'Barn' Owl, alias Great Horned Owl

This morning, 4 January 2017, the temperature is -11C, windchill -20C. The sun is shining, which makes all the difference. However, a glance at the forecast for the next week, shows tiny snowlfake (ha, ha, I meant to type "snowflake!) icons on almost every day.

Yesterday, on the spur of the moment, I decided to drive SE of the city and see if I could find a Snowy Owl or possibly even a Short-eared Owl. I had no idea what the winter roads would be like and quickly found out that on the main highway south, there was enough snow left on the road for much of the drive to hide the lines showing the different lanes - something that I never like. Once I reached the area I wanted to start looking, each side road looked too snow-covered for my liking, so I ended up staying on two of the main roads - seeing nothing but a barn and a shed or two.

I had seen and photographed the barn in this photo before and I had also recently seen a photo of it with a Great Horned Owl perched on it, posted by a friend. I had not set out to drive quite this far, as Snowy Owls were what I had really wanted to search for. Also, experience told me that just because an owl is seen in a place by one person, it doesn't mean that the owl will be there again on a different day. I was certainly lucky this time! The owl had just been preening and its feathers were still fluffed up. The barn is quite a distance from the road and this is a fully zoomed image, Focal Length (35mm format) - 1140 mm. From that far away, to anyone driving by, the owl looked just like a piece of wood sticking up.

"With its long, earlike tufts, intimidating yellow-eyed stare, and deep hooting voice, the Great Horned Owl is the quintessential owl of storybooks. This powerful predator can take down birds and mammals even larger than itself, but it also dines on daintier fare such as tiny scorpions, mice, and frogs. It’s one of the most common owls in North America, equally at home in deserts, wetlands, forests, grasslands, backyards, cities, and almost any other semi-open habitat between the Arctic and the tropics." From AllAboutBirds.

www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Horned_Owl/id