Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: English Partridge

Another fully zoomed and heavily cropped image - I seem to have posted several of these grainy shots recently, lol. Can never get a close shot of a Gray Partridge, though I would love to, as they have beautiful colours and feather patterns. Posting this one so that I can include it in a couple of my Sets. This photo was taken yesterday, 13 March 2014, when I spent the whole day SE of the city again, with friends Cathy and Terry. What a slow day it was for much of the time. Took us just over 6 hours to find the first Snowy Owl - just the tiniest, distant white speck on the ground, far across a huge field. We were beginning to wonder if maybe all the Snowies had already left to fly north, so we were happy to see this one, and a second one about four hours later, perched on a distant power pole. No photo opportunities for these owls, but it felt to good to know that there were at least these two owls still in the area. We had no luck at all finding a Short-eared Owl - very different from 7th March, when we saw 8 of them, six in flight and two on the ground. In addition to the 2 Snowies, we did see 9 Great Horned Owls, though, some on nests. Weather was beautiful with some interesting clouds for part of the day, clearing much later. Some of the fields looked pretty bare, while others were still covered in snow. The "heat-wave" distortion was really bad all day long. Does anyone know if there is a way to overcome this? It makes good, clear shots impossible.

Always better to get a poor quality photo than none at all : ) Gray Partridge, an introduced, non-native species in the Pheasant family, are usually so hard to photograph because they take off in flight immediately or else land in a field way in the distance. Though this shot was barely cropped, it was taken from the car window and I find this so often doesn't work - the warm air from the car rising on a bitterly cold day seems to cause the air to move, resulting in blurry images. Had a great day on 22 December 2013 with friends Cathy and Terry, driving the backroads SE of the city, hoping to see an owl or two. The day started off with a Long-eared Owl and ended with a Short-eared Owl! In total, we saw 5 Snowy Owls, 4 Great Horned Owls, 1 Long-eared Owl and 1 Short-eared Owl. Plus a few other species, including a Northern Shrike, many Grey Partridges (all of which flew before we could take photos, other than a couple of very distant ones including this shot), Horned Larks, Ravens/Crows, owls in barn windows, a beautiful Gyrfalcon and a colourful sunrise. Not a bad day, I think you'll agree : ) The only thing we didn't see, except briefly, was the sun, so we had low light all day, unfortunately! It was so unbearably cold all day, windchill temperature was -30C. A few seconds out of the car and fingers were so painful, despite wearing gloves. Difficult to hold the camera steady when one is shivering, ha. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Partridge www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/gray_partridge/id