First Life Bird of 2009

I was commenting to my wife about a week ago that I need to get more owls on my list. My only owl came last winter when a Northern Hawk-Owl wintered over nearby, presumably due to a deer mouse population crash up North.

Last Friday I was birding at La Salle Marina to build up my 2009 year list. While I was pointing out the Ruddy Ducks to a fellow photographer he told me about a large number of Long-Tailed Ducks at the Burlington Lift Bridge.

On Monday I went to the lift bridge and added a couple of gulls and a Peregrine Falcon. I got some pictures of the Peregrine flying with a pigeon in his/her talons. When I got home to look at the pictures I was extremely disappointed to see that I had the camera set to over expose. I immediately set the camera correctly, and I was lucky that I already had pictures of those birds previously.

Yesterday (Tuesday) I went back to the lift bridge to see if the Peregrine was still hanging around. I didn't see him/her at the lift birdge, so I walked down to the end of the canal. There were large number of Long-Tailed Ducks, Red-Breasted Mergansers, small groups of White-Winged Scoters, Ring-Billed Gulls and a single Black-Backed Gull.

All of a sudden all the gulls took off with a lot of noise, and many of the ducks started swimming away. When there was nothing else close by I turned around to walk back to my car, and there on the wall about 20 m from me was a Snowy Owl!

As this is the first time in my life I have seen a Snowy, I'm not sure if it was an immature or a female, or maybe even a male not in winter plumage yet.

The owl watched me calmly as I turned around and got a few pictures. He/she went back to looking around and I realized that in order to get back to my car I would have to pass within 5 m on the narrow walkway. Before this became as issue the gulls chased him/her off and they flew away.

I followed them for as long as I could hoping they would circle around, but they flew off a long way over the lake. I was struck by how similar in size the owl and the gulls were.

It turns out I had a clue on my way down the walkway. As I was looking at the ducks in the canal my foot hit a high spot in the walkway. I looked down, and just in front of me were a pair of severed wings that could have belonged to a pigeon or small duck (I didn't look at them too closely). I thought that was an odd place for them, as the falcon brings his/her pray somewhere high to eat in peace.

I knew there were more Snowy Owl sightings in the area recently due to a lemming population crash up North, but I hadn't heard ot any reports for the area around the lift bridge. I was completely surprised to get my second owl and first life bird of the year.

There have been some reports on a local mailing list about photographers not being respectful of owls while taking photographs. The accusations stop short of harassment, but there was a couple of days right around my sighting that the mailing list was pretty charged against owl photography.

It's funny how I can go my whole life without seeing a particular bird, and then once I see it the first time I get another sighting almost right away. Today I saw another Snowy Owl about 15 km from the first sighting. No sightings for 28 years (2 years of that bird watching) then two sightings in two days.