It was snowing heavily yesterday morning up in Sax-Zim Bog!

While normally one would not expect to see a Barred Owl hunting much after day break, a Great Horned Owl has also been hunting the “same turf” at night in Winterberry Bog. Given GHO’s will happily prey upon their smaller cousins, it has forced this very nocturnal owl to hunt during the day.

Barred Owl (just prior to take-off)

After taking some photographs I headed over to the Welcome Center for my stint as a volunteer. Over the past few days I have met birders who heralded from all over the country. Being a northern Minnesota native it is kind of funny to explain to Texans and Californians that a temperature of 12F is warm. They don’t believe me!

The Barred Owl’s final perch … I was just another obstacle / tree to avoid! It actually landed thirty yards away, but just above my friend’s Mark M.’s head! To say we were both dumbfounded as the bird flew directly towards us is a HUGE understatement.

The view (albeit quite blurry) as an owl approached my head. Given the heavy snow  in progress and thus lack of light, I was definitely not able to have a short enough shutter speed to capture the experience, but it gives everyone the idea. The owl was “eye to eye” with me at this point, and only about 12 feet away. I remained very still as it flew past me … only feet from my head!!!

I wasn’t planning on Bogging it today, but my buddy Jeff M. wanted to go owling. How could I resist? By 6:15 am I was out the door and “bog bound”. Our morning was pretty slow, but after a late breakfast / early lunch we struck gold. We found a Northern Hawk Owl within yards of where I had seen it a few days previously. Owls are like fishermen; in the winter if they find a good hunting spot it is amazing how often they return to hunt from the same exact trees.

Although there was a decent snow flurry in progress, the owl was kind enough to land with a bunch of tamarack pines as a backdrop (white skies are boring). Thus, I decided it was worth slogging through the deep snow in an attempt to get some good images. I think my friend Jeff thought I was crazy because at times I had to wade through snow up to my mid thigh.

Eventually I approached close enough to the owl that I was comfortable some great photography would entail, but even more importantly I would not flush or stop the owl from hunting. I was correct on all accounts. My method for approaching the owl was to slowly walk about five yards forward … stop and wait for a few minutes … and then repeat many times. My goal was to appear harmless, which was successful. Take a look at the photograph taken immediately below, which represented my closest approach to the Northern Hawk Owl (about 30 yards). Here is a pic of me in action (photo taken by Jeff). Look for the small bird in the tree towards the center top of the image (may need to click / press upon to view at a larger resolution).

Just importantly I never flushed the owl. This photograph is the last the image I took. The owl is totally ignoring me as it hunts for mice and voles. When I left this bird, I actually backed up very slowly … once again about five yards at a time with multiple pauses. Eventually I turned and retraced my steps through the snow.

Here are the photographs I captured. Pretty cool?! A Northern Hawk Owl is about the size of raven.