Mountain Chickadee, Crossbills, Norther Hawk Owl, GGO make for a Great outing. (121124)

I was a little energenic on Saturday morning and cut Zel's sleep short on him. He was great about it and didn't complain too much all day. We started the morning with a GGO that we spent about an hour with. We saw it hunt successfully twice and seemed to be continuing to hunt as the sun got up.

While we were shooting this one, another owl made an appearance as did Dan and Lauren. While we were checking out the the second owl, Zel says he spotted two more owls in flight. I didn't get to see them, but it made it a great morning, and it was only 10:00 a.m. An hour later, after bumping to to Kerri and Jamie, we found one of the birds I was hoping to find in the area, some White Winged Crossbills.

In the same flock we also spotted a couple of Red Crossbills mixed in, they were all males which I appreciated as I love the reds in the winter months.

Of course there is nothing wrong with the female clouring either.

While we were waiting for these guys to come back after being spooked by a vehicle, I grabbed my first ever shot of a Mountain Chickadee, so that made the day as far as I was concerned.

Now that I have my first, I will have to work at getting some closer shots:)  We observed that the deer had been significantly absent for the day when we spied this long distance buck who had a young lady in his company. It was a great sunny day to roam about the fields with your girl.

Zel and I decided that we would grab a burger in Canmore and take a look at the Spray Lakes route on the way home. We are usually certain of finding Rocky Mountain Sheep in that area, none found this timne around, but we did spot this Northern Hawk Owl, another first for Zel.

We grabbed lunch then headed back home. There was far more snow than anywhere else we had been today, and while we found tracks-critters were hard to find. We did managfe to find this large cow moose that was in one of the parking lots licking road dust off the cars there.  It was really quite interesting, she did not seem to worry about the folks loading and unloading thier vehicles.

As we got closer to the highway, we managed to find a little more sun and this trio of Pine Grosbeaks, which added the final bit of colour to our day. 

That wrapped up a great day out in the mountains and woods of beautiful Alberta. I hope everyone has a great wildlife week.
Turbo