January 23, 2010

Snowy Owl Twitch!

On the 23th of January, we chased the Snowy Owl in Peyton, Colorado with our neighbor Davis. This bird was found around Christmas, and has been predictable ever since. On the long three-hour drive we looked at all the raptors that were perched on the power poles, most of them were Red-tails but a few of them turned out to be Ferruginous Hawks. When we arrived at our destination we started searching around the subdivision that we thought the Snowy Owl was being seen in, but after an hour of searching, we never found the owl, or the hordes of birders who are said to follow the bird. So, we decided to read the written directions instead of following Davis’s GPS, which was how we got to this locale. As it turned out, we were in the wrong neighborhood. We did manage to find a wintering flock of Mountain Bluebirds during our wanderings, which was great. Upon arrival at the correct neighborhood, we spotted the owl almost immediately. The large, chunky, snow-white, yellow-eyed owl that should be hunting the arctic thousands of miles north of here was perched on top a white structure, and, as Davis said, "That can't be the owl . . . it can't be as white as what it's perching on!"

Mountain Bluebird - by Joel Such

Mountain Bluebird - by Marcel Such

Mountain Bluebird - by Joel Such

Snowy Owl - by Marcel Such

Snowy Owl - by Marcel Such

Snowy Owl Video Through Scope - by Joel Such

Pronghorn - by Joel Such

4 comments:

Ali Iyoob said...

Sweet bird, I'm glad you got to see it!

birdboymatt said...

Nice, glad you were successful!!

Anonymous said...

It is very interesting for me to read this post. Thanks for it. I like such topics and everything that is connected to them. I definitely want to read a bit more soon.

Best regards

Jillian said...

Cool photos. The snowy owl is one of my favorite birds. I've never been lucky enough to photograph one in the wild.