Theme: Snowy Owl.

[Karl Egressy]

This image goes back nine years (2007/01/31).
I was shooting this Owl with a 500 lens, mounted on a tripod.
The Owl was sitting on a fence post at eye level, not too far from me.
All of a sudden it flew up and started hovering above me and then went down.
The 500 got too big all of a sudden. I remembered that I had a 400 lens in the car.
Walked over, got the lens and fired a few frames.
It took off and then I realized that it had a Field Mouse in its talons.
All it happened on Amherst Island, Ontario.

Canon 10D
Canon 400 f5.6 L
ISO 200
f7.1
1/1000 s

[gail bisson]

You had far better luck on Amherst Island than I did Karl.
I spent the coldest, snowiest,longest 5 days there in January 2012. We spent hours trudging through waist high snow and saw exactly 1 owl- a northern hawk owl on a wire. And it stayed on that wire for an hour and we gave up...
In 5 days I took about 100 images and most of them were of chickadees!
I really like the expression on the owl's face. Environment is very appealing.
I like your off-center placement of the owl.
Gail

[Joseph Przybyla]

Beautiful bird, nicely shown. Such a treasure. I like your composition showing the environment. Thank you for sharing, Karl.

[Karl Egressy]

You had far better luck on Amherst Island than I did Karl.
I spent the coldest, snowiest,longest 5 days there in January 2012. We spent hours trudging through waist high snow and saw exactly 1 owl- a northern hawk owl on a wire. And it stayed on that wire for an hour and we gave up...
In 5 days I took about 100 images and most of them were of chickadees!
I really like the expression on the owl's face. Environment is very appealing.
I like your off-center placement of the owl.
Gail

Thanks and sorry to hear your bad experience.
It is not always good.
One time I had great images of a hunting Boreal Owl with prey and also had a Northern Saw-whet Owl.
An other time I left within an hour as the snow storm started and covered the 300 km home ride in six hours on HW 401 and counted nine cars in the ditch, including a big rig.

[Grace Scalzo]

What a great story and memory, Karl. I like the anticipatory pose of the owl...you sense that something is about to happen.

[dankearl]

Surprised you kept this one from us this long, Karl.
Nice habitat and it certainly has the look that it has something..

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Karl, great eye contact, and you were very fortunate to have been able to change your lens without the snowy flying away. Well exposed throughout, and I like the inclusion of the BG foliage.

[Bill Dix]

Nice one, Karl. Fabulous stare; good environment and exposure. Wish I had something like this buried in my old files.

[Frank Schauf]

Beautiful portrait, great details and eye contact, Karl.

[Satish Ranadive]

Excellent image. Very nice pose, beautiful colours and superb composition.

Regards,
Satish.

[Diane Miller]

This is gorgeous!! It has that subtle detail in the whites that I always long to see in these guys.