Since we are in Alberta for the winter this year, it has been Terry's goal to add Snowy Owl to his yearly bird list. This bird has been an important missing piece to The List for at least ten years, even fifteen. Three trips to the area broadly referred to as "North East of Calgary" by people on the Alberta Birds Face Book group yielded nothing. We had been looking in vain for the last couple of months.
After the last fruitless trip at the beginning of January, I was ready to give up. Terry brought it up again yesterday. "Are you ready for another car-birding day?" he said.
"Fine. But let's try going north this time instead of south."
"OK."
"Lord, we'd really like to see a Snowy Owl today" I prayed for good measure.
Terry pored over the map, plotting his route on less busy roads, avoiding the QE2, the freeway. "Let's go to Vegreville." Having a destination made it more of a fun trip; we would be able to see the world's largest Easter egg, a Ukrainian pysanka.
We set off just before sunrise, which was at 8:29 this morning. I kept my eyes peeled on fenceposts and telephone poles to my right, while Terry watched his side of the road, as well as the road.
Snow Buntings was the first sighting of the day. Previously we've seen them as they wheel and fly up in a frenzied cloud from the side of the road as the car approaches. They're so skittish we didn't positively identify them earlier this month. Today we saw them feeding in a grain field, and later, actually sitting together for a few seconds in a small bare tree. I got a good look at them through Terry's binoculars. This is actually a shot taken by our birder friend from B.C., Gary Davidson. "Our" Buntings against the snowy field, however, looked just the same.
A few kilometres from Vegreville, I suddenly called out, "Stop!" I had seen a lump in a tree. We turned around and drove back.. A Great Horned Owl! We had seen and heard this large owl last March at the school in Tucson AZ, but only at night. Today it sat serenely on the edge of a grove of trees, and was even in the same spot on our way home again, an hour later.
"We're getting closer!" exclaimed Terry.
About five km from Vegreville we hit the jackpot. "Stop!" I called out again. There on a pole in the middle of a field was a Snowy Owl! Our search was over. This is a female, so not pure white. Again, I'm grateful to Gary for allowing us to use his photo. "Our" owl faced the same way, and looked much the same, but was on a higher pole than this one.
"Good, we can have lunch now!" said Terry.
AT Vegreville we discovered the temperature was -25 degrees Celsius, -33 with the wind chill, quite a bit colder than in Red Deer. Climbing out of the car, we only lingered long enough to take a selfie with the giant pysanka, then rushed back into the warmth to eat our delicious ham and Swiss cheese sandwiches on whole wheat buns. The sun shone in Vegreville, and we watched the metal egg partially rotate back and forth with the breeze like some sort of bizarre weathervane.
