West End Snowy Owls

December 2, 2014

Today I went out with Jane and Connie, so we all went together.

After a brief fruitless stop at Burnside Pond, we went out Eagleson Road and soon spotted our first Snowy Owl on a fence post.  While Connie & I were trying to photograph it, Jane spotted a second one on the ground in an adjacent field.  Both were too far to approach with trespassing, so we contented ourselves with scope views.

We toured the adjacent side roads without turning up anything else, so we decided to go to Jack Pine Trail.  Well, the target was a Black-backed Woodpecker, but there was no sign of it.  We had good views of Hairy and Downy, though.

So we went to Andrew Haydon Park, where there was pretty much nothing.  The ponds and near-shore areas of the river were already frozen.  We checked Grandview feeders without seeing anything beyond an American Goldfinch.  The next stop was Shirley's Bay boat launch, but there was nothing on the river.  We went over to Hilda and had our lunch in the car while watching the American Tree Sparrows, Mourning Doves and Blue Jays.

After lunch, we drove out past Dunrobin via March Valley Road hoping for a raptor, but only came up with a Pileated Woodpecker.  On Vance we saw the same flock of Turkeys twice.  Finally, we drove back by Eagleson to see if the Snowy Owls were any closer for photographs, but they were not.  If fact, we could only find the one on the ground.  We surmised that a photographer we spoke to had spooked the one on the post.