Yesterday I was at Halls Road, a popular spot for bird photography and a wonderful place to let one’s inner child loose to enjoy the magic that comes from putting out a hand full of seed and having charming little birds perch on one’s fingers to select one or two or three seeds to fly away with. While shooting a Barred Owl perching serenely in a tree, conversations developed between various photographers. Turns out, the Snowy Owls are back! And with the information shared with me about a few typical locations to find these unusual birds for the area, the fellow and I headed out today to search Whitby for sightings…and, of course, photo opportunities.
No Snowy Owls were seen. But the water was pretty; the light, diffuse. If the intended subject was keeping a low profile, why not make the most of a day outdoors?
The shot above is a Common Goldeneye. As soon as movement along the edge of the pier was seen, these birds immediately headed out to deeper waters. The water was so lovely, though, that I still had to shoot a few frames.
A female Oldsquaw kept an eye on me as she swam by, undecided if she should stay on track or head out farther. The walkway is raised, so unfortunately, I couldn’t get a shot closer to eye level, but in this area, it’s a tradeoff: high up and close or closer to eye level and distant.
The walkway out to the lighthouse is closed off this winter. It did pretty much look like a skating rink, making it unsafe, and I guess it saves maintenance costs to simply close it off rather than worry about salting and shovelling. However, it’s not so great for photography of the Snowy Owls that like to hangout on the pier right across from here. This is one of the places I saw a Snowy Owl last year and if they still like to perch on the icy pier, as I’m told they do, it makes it more difficult to get a good shot. My shot last year was taken right at that lighthouse.
I think this is my new favourite gull shot. The diffuse lighting and the grey sky were like a huge soft box and I was able to track it coming in for a landing on a railing.
Having failed in our search for Snowy Owls, we finally headed home via Halls Road. The Barred Owl wasn’t around at the moment, but a few of the regulars were. Chickadees are always delightful, especially to humans with seeds on cold, snowy days.
This White-breasted Nuthatch had just landed in my hand, selected a seed and is now figuring out what to do with it. It was apparently not going to immediately eat it, so was looking for a safe hiding place so that it could come back to it later.
This sparrow is deciding whether to land on a pile of seeds that someone else left in the snow or wait for me to leave first. It went for the seeds.
A junco is puffed up against the cold, just observing the world for a while.