A friend of mine tipped me off that a Great Gray Owl had taken up residence in a field, just a short distance from his house. He lives fifteen minutes from my place so if the owl had chosen that field as a feeding ground, I was in luck. I don't know about the rest of you but a Great Gray Owl is a big deal to me. Few people have ever seen one let alone taken pictures of it.
The GGO is the largest owl in North America. In length that is but not in weight. If you've ever had the priveledge of seeing this magnificent raptor, you'll never forget the experience. It has the most intense eyes that seem to bore through you. A long body sporting a five foot wing span, silently gliding toward you is jaw dropping when you see it for the first time.
I had the good fortune of photographing one last year but had to drive over a hundred miles to get to it. This one was fifteen minutes away.
When I arrived I saw him perched on a branch, so thin, that it would barely hold a Sparrow let alone the largest owl but there it was. He looked into my lens and I got my first shot of those intense yellow eyes. It was then I discovered a problem. The temperature outside was -19 according to the reading on my dash. I was dressed warm enough to be out for a short period of time but when I had the camera and lens pointed at the bird, and the owl launched I noticed that the frame rate had slowed down. I wasn't sure if this intense cold would be a focusing issue as well but I wouldn't be able to tell until I uploaded the images.
From what I can see I did have a focusing issue. I'm going back today with a different plan to see if I can rectify that. If I can then I'll tell you in the next post what I did to make things better. In the mean time here are some images from yesterday.