I forgot to mention that on Sunday we again drove down to Boundary Bay to have another look at the snowy owls. We spotted two right away since we now knew what we were looking for...okay...the cluster of birders with their scopes also helped to locate them and off we trudged toward the group. We came up a bit noisy with all the gravel crunching under our feet and the general swishing of gortex jackets but no one shushed us and just as I was about to open my mouth to Ken, my eyes focused on the Snowy not fifteen feet away. We thought everyone had their scopes focused on the two way out by the shoreline, but no, there was one right under our noses. It didn't mind at all having all these humans standing stock still staring at it. It didn't even mind the horse and rider who came crunching through on their walk. I wonder, if like cats, they know they are being admired?

My feet started to numb up so we kept on walking down the path and all in all we spotted eight snowy owls before the sun went down. Again, they were immature as they all had barring, though some were more heavily marked than others. One owl kept chasing the other owls away into other sections of the low lying scrub.

We also saw:

bald eagle (mature)

bald eagle (immature)

short-eared owl

pheasant (male)

harriers

2 herons squabbling over a pond

2 northern flickers sharing a post

The pheasant glided past right at eye level and again, about 15 feet away, which was lucky as I hadn't seen a pheasant so close in the wild like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know they are a dime a dozen...