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One youngster was beautifully perched high up in a tree, with a commanding view all around the prairie. As I watched her for a while I realized she was leaving her perch and grabbing tufts of grass in her claws and then flying back to her perch, on a fairly regular basis. Sometimes she would land on the ground too. At first I thought she was hunting, but in the few hours I observed her, she never caught anything. She was either practicing, or not a very good hunter! Towards dusk she did miss landing on her perch and had to fly around again. Given she only had a few black marks on her feathers, she was very young and maybe inexperienced. Hopefully she’ll get the hang of it and have a long and fruitful life, coming back to Alberta for many years to come. For me, it was pretty special, as normally the owls are on telegraph poles and if you get too close they naturally fly away. If that happens, I leave them be, but I have seen others chase them from pole to pole, trying to get that perfect shot, which must be tiring for the birds and is interfering with their hunting. That’s what made today’s encounter so special, I could spend a lot of time with the owl, knowing I wasn’t interfering with her behavior. Magical.
On the drive back I had a surprise on the side of the road. A prairie falcon with a kill! I managed to get a quick, high ISO shot as it was dusk, but that was an added bonus to the day, as was the sunset.
Unlike the Snowy Owls, the Bald Eagles don’t conveniently perch on road side poles, so I ahd to do some careful walking to get close enough to get some shots. Still, there were quite a few out, and as you can see, I got behind one in a tree and managed to get a decent shot. Shortly after I left to go back to my car, the eagle was mobbed by crows and flew off. Hopefully, with the warm/cold snowy weather cycles we’ve been having this March that the Bald Eagles are finding enough to eat, as they are magnificent.
I also saw the winning entries for the Canadian Geographic photo competition titled Authentic Alberta, very nice pics from the thousands of entries. Sadly (for me) non of mine were winners, but congratulations to the winners and it was good to take part and see the likes and comments on my images.
In the meantime, I joined 500px and have some of my images there. I’ll slowly upload more as time passes, but the few images I have there already have been favorably received, which is always nice! So far the most popular one is this one:
I drove around the Irricana/Beiseker area, and saw quite a few, but they were far off, so I continued driving around until I spotted one on a mound overlooking the fields. A nice new pose I thought, but the sun was in the wrong place (well, I was in the wrong place really). So I took a long, circular wander through knee high snow to come round to a better position and slowly approached the stationary owl. As I don’t like to disturb the owls when I take pictures, I got as close as I dared and got some nice images, some shown below. Then I went back to the road and my car via the snowy terrain. As I sat in the car to examine my pictures, I caught a glimpse of movement and turned to see the very same owl I’d not wanted to disturb fly right past the front of my car at head height! It would have been a wonderful shot, but I had no time to get the camera out, so I just watched it fly majestically past. Awesome.
Thinking I’d not see anymore owls (it was getting late), I started back and lo, came across a further three owls on poles that had been vacant on the earlier drive by. As the sun had again moved itself to the wrong place in the sky, I slowly crept up to one owl in my car, and stopped just past it and took some pictures from my window, as you can see from the picture below. Lovely ending to a top day.
It was too good an opportunity to miss, so I got my gear out, did some practice shots through the glass to get set up, and ever so slowly and quietly open the door, just enough to poke the end of my lens out, as it was rather chilly!
Luckily the rabbit had no intention of moving and I got this rather nice shot, showing the snowflakes on his eyelashes and whiskers!
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Although I wasn’t successful, Canadian Geographic has contacted me and let me know that three of my images have been shortlisted for a special upcoming magazine! Rather unexpected but amazing news. I have sent off the high resolution images for consideratin, fingers crossed I’ll see them in print soon!
Canadian Geographic also does featured competition as well, currently there is the Authentic Alberta competition. Check out the amazing pictures already submitted here.
The images that were shortlisted were:
This day was no exception, although after quite a few hours of seeing nothing, not even a deer, I was beginning to doubt my wisdom in being there. As it was, I got to see a beautiful red fox, an animal I have never before seen here. The fox didn’t hang around and I only got two decent shots in focus from my idling and badly positioned car before another car scared the fox away, never to return. Still, to me a magical encounter, however brief.
I managed, with the help of my very patient family, to select ‘only’ 8 images to submit, which are:
I was also in Banff this weekend and saw the flood damage there, at Cascade ponds, along the Bow Valley Parkway, around Canmore and Exshaw and the road in between Canmore and Banff. An amazing amount of repair work has already been done, but 3 months after the floods, the scale of damage across the whole of Southern Alberta is still huge, and the demonstration of the power of nature is awe-inspiring and a little humbling.
So I am very grateful for where I live, and I hope that I can share some of that good fortune with you, by showcasing my images. For starters, here are pictures of the the Brown Black bear I mentioned, by the side of the road, enjoying all the dandelions, another black bear, also eating a dandelion and some mountain sheep by the road, not eating dandelions.
Both the bear and I looked at each other in surprise for a few seconds, before the bear, sensibly, went off into the tall grass on the other side of the road. A few days later I was on the same stretch of road, and got some pictures of another young black bear walking along, taking time to eat the roadside flowers and totally unaware of the all the cars on the road, waiting to get by, or close to take a picture!
Another favorite drive of mine in Waterton, the Akamina Parkway to Cameron Lake, was very badly damaged in the extreme weather that caused the floods in Southern Alberta last June. If you check out this link you can see that the road was completely washed away in some places - that was some rain!
I’ll be heading back to Waterton in the Fall, but for now, here are some images from the trip.
I am rather humbled, as there were hundreds of entries, from all over the world. The top 25 images featured photographers from the UK, USA, Canada, South Africa and India alone.
Check out the winning, honorable mention and other runners up images here
And here is Little Baa once again
:-)
So I entered some of my pictures into the ‘In flight’ category.
There are some amazing pictures in all the categories and I would recommend checking it out, just to see what great wildlife there is around Canada and how many passionate people there are out there taking awesome pictures.
The picture
s I submitted are below.
I heard about it from reading another blog, and as the next competition was about Wildlife Babies and young, I thought I’d submit a few pics.
The competition is run every few months, and you can check out some of the previous winners and runners up on their main webpage, which has some stunning shots here
The five images I submitted are:
And I did.
A heron at Vermillion Lakes, and a black bear and an Elk on the Bow Valley parkway. But no Grizzly Bear No. 64, or her cubs. Oh well, there are many more days to come, probably with better weather too. As I’ve met her before in previous years, I wasn’t too gutted. Getting out into the Rockies for any reason is a good day.
And then today, I found a blog post about Grizzly bear sightings over the weekend. Bear 64, and her three cubs, in Vermillion Lakes and Bear 126 near Lake Louise, both on the Friday (link). And then an article about Bear 64 and her 3 cubs causing traffic chaos on the Sunday, in the same Vermillion Lakes area (link). I had missed them all by one day, even though I was in the right area!
So luck does play a large part in trying to photograph wild animals in their natural habitat. But that also makes it ever so special when everything does come together: the animal and you are in the same place, the light is right and you even remembered your camera!
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