Snowy Owls over the Years

After our unsuccessful search for Snowy Owls I thought I would look back at my photos from the past and reassure myself that we did actually see Snow Owls on some of those excursions.  I can still hardly believe the first one, in February 2017, but here it is.

All the Snowy Owls we saw that year were sitting on the ground, beside fences where there's a bit of longer grass, like this one.  None of them were very close, but it was certainly a thrill to see them.

That year was so successful that we were definitely spoiled, expecting to have the same success every year, but now I think we witnessed an exceptional event among Snowy Owls, to see so many close together.

This is the unbelievable photo, 15 Snowy Owls along the fence in the back corner of a field,  Definitely a long distance away, but we did have serious binoculars with us, and verified that all of these little white dots were in fact owls.  I have never heard of such a group of Snowies together before or since.

There were a further 6 owls spread out along the other fence at the back of the same field.  Do you blame us for being spoiled in future years?  And we've gone back to the same general area each year since.

In 2018 we only saw one Snowy Owl, and that when we weren't expecting it, just driving home from a visit to Conn.  It was on a fencepost and when we stopped to look (we never got out of the car on any of these jaunts) it flew off to a small tree in a fencerow nearby.

After failing to spot one in 2019 or 2020, a year ago on that fateful day, January 6th, 2021,we went off for our annual drive again and were successful in seeing this Snowy Owl, while reading news reports of rioters storming the U.S. capitol.  We were appalled!  We do follow American new quite closely, even if we can never really comment on it.

This photo shows what we're looking for as we drive around, and you can see how we might easily miss it - just a slight white spot on the top of a hydro pole.  Mrs. F.G. is the one with the sharpest eyes.

This is a closer look once I zoomed in and cropped the picture.  I always snap a quick shot to start with for the record, in case it flies away quickly.

So there you have it, three years in which we've seen the majestic Snowy Owls (and two in which we didn't).  But they've given us much more pleasure than simply counting our sightings, for they are what inspires us to go for those  long winter drives like my last post showed, even if we don't see any owls.   We've both got deeper connections to an entire part of the map thanks to our searching for Snowies.  I'm sure some would disagree, but I think much of the pleasure comes from the pursuit rather than the successful conclusion.