Happy New Year!

Yeah, I know, it's been a while. The problem is, I haven't had anything of any interest to tell, really. Other than the Cooper's Hawk taking out a bunch of our feeder birds (including a Blue Jay, which made me sad), things have been quiet.

Actually, this morning we had another bird of prey in the yard. I came home around 9:00 AM to pick up my hubby (his truck wouldn't start in the cold, so I left work, picked him up, dropped him at his office, and came back to work), and there was either a Sharpie or a Merlin on a kill in the front yard. I didn't get a good enough look at it to tell which it was, but I think it had taken down a Junco (which also made me sad, because I love those little guys), and it was struggling to fly around the side of the house with it in its talons. So it was small, for sure - definitely not the Cooper's.

This past weekend, my hubby and I went out looking for Snowy Owls, and we managed to find our first once since 2010. Yay! It was a male, and waaaaaaaaay out in a field, so no pictures, but still! And Dave made a great spot - a Short-eared Owl perched on a fence post, hiding within a tree. Neither of us had ever seen one of these guys before, so it was pretty cool. I managed a couple of ID pictures, and I'll post them in the next day or two, even though they're kinda crappy.

Screechy good fun

For the past three nights, my hubby's been hearing an eastern screech owl calling from the woods adjacent to our property. (Dave, the hubs, does astrophotography, so he's been outside in his observatory the past few nights because the sky's been nice and clear - and apparently that means good hunting for the little screech owls.) We need to search these little guys out in the daytime!

Eastern screech owls 1

Eastern screech owls 1, a photo by Jen St. Louis on Flickr.

For my first photo post, I thought I should go with one of my personal favorites. These two eastern screech owls were featured at a photography workshop I attended last Fall at the Mountsberg Raptor Centre.