My hubby and I went out for a drive yesterday morning in advance of the blizzard that forecasters were predicting (and which is currently raging – oh boy I am not looking forward to walking to work in it this morning!). We don’t get out very often for a Sunday drive anymore, as I’m usually working that day, so this was a nice treat. We headed east of the city – I had heard reports that there were snowy owls hanging out that way, so we were on a mission to find one. (We’ve only seen a snowy once before, a couple of years ago while on an ice fishing trip in the southern part of the province).
The sky was a weird colour yesterday morning. There was an inversion and the sky was steel grey, barely any sunlight breaking through. Combined with the skiff of snow on the fields, my hubby and I wondered if looking for snowys on such a day was akin to searching for Waldo (I’m not dating myself at all with that reference, am I?). 😉 We may have driven past several dozen of them and never known.
Despite the dearth of snowys, we found some beautiful, craggy trees that had been planted as a windbreak alongside a very large farm. There were huge nests in every other tree, it seemed. We saw dozens of black-billed magpies all over the fields and in the ditches, so perhaps the nests belonged to them – I will have to find out what types of nests they make.
My hubby spotted a speedy bunch of partridges that bolted across the snow when he stopped the truck to photograph them. We also flushed out a beautiful male pheasant, but didn’t get a photo.
I had to laugh when we came over a rise and spotted this irrigation unit sprawled across the field – doesn’t it look a bit like a gigantic mechanical caterpillar hunched over the snow?
I hope you have a wonderful start to your week! If you’re in one of the areas being affected by bad weather, please be careful out there!
Check out these amazing photos of snowys from south of the border: Snowy Owls in Delaware (Hoof Beats and Foot Prints)
And here are some good laughs about our Canadian weather: Canadian Snow Humour! (Funny and Interesting Stuff People Have Sent Me)
Flowery Prose. 