Snowy Owl Success, part 2!

Check out Many more photos of this owl here. Vote on your favorite!

I took a trip along the Massachusetts/New Hampshire coast yesterday sporting a rental 500mm f4 with a 1.4 teleconverter from borrowlenses.com giving an effective focal length of 700mm. With all my owl sightings recently off the beaten path I needed to prepare differently this time. All the bulk and weight of a camera setup like this makes it more difficult to access these far reaching areas. Especially the fact that I needed to carry a heavy tripod as well. With a few special coat hanger and duct tape modifications I was able to carry the whole camera and lens vertically in my back country snowboarding bag making it very easy to hike the miles that I planned.

Fortunate for me I didn't have to hike nearly as far as I thought I would. Within 20 minutes of leaving my truck at lot 7 on Plum Island I located a single, beautiful peppered Snowy Owl. This owl was very patient seemingly sleepy as the wind gusted up to 30 mph. To get a sense of how strong the wind was check out this video capture.

On my way back up the coast I swung by Rye Harbor and watched some Buffleheads, Horned Grebes, and Long-tailed ducks feed in the shallows.

More owl photos here.
-Bill

If at first you don't succeed.... ( Snowy Owl)

For more images visit my updated Snowy Owl gallery.

 As they say,  if at first you don't succeed, try, and try again. Over the past 3 years I have spent hundreds of hours and driven hundreds of miles in search of the elusive Snowy Owl.

With an extreme fluctuation in the population of migrating birds from the Arctic, some years us New Englanders may never see a Snowy at all like in the winter of 2010. Hunger and changing abundance of prey can drive these typically far northern birds deep into the lower 48. The winter of 2011-2012 seems to be a banner year with birds reported almost every day along the coast from Connecticut-Maine.

This past weekend I headed to plum island in search of this elusive owl. I headed out before sunrise to arrive just as the sun was coming up at Plum Island, just east of Newburyport , MA. I had a plan and I was sticking to it. I won't get int to many details as I would like to try this again, next weekend, but it worked. This large adult owl was very patient and relaxed. I was able to sit on the sand and watch the owl several times as it ate a seagull, hunted the dunes, and roosted along the sea. I drove home buzzing with the excitement of finally getting photos I could " see the pupil of the eye". That is how I often measure my photos, by the crispness of the pupil of the eye. This may seem excessive, but I have learned when the pupil is clear and sharp at 100% the rest of the image with be epic!
-Bill

For more Snowy Owl Images please visit my website.

Barnacle Goose, a rare treat in New Hampshire.

After a few attempts to locate this reported Barnacle goose, I found it this morning in a hay field among 300-400 Canada Geese. The pictures are not great but they leave not doubt that this rare visitor who has never been on record breeding in North America has called New Hampshire home, at least for the time being. I will attempt to capture some better photos of this guy in the next few days.

 Barnacle geese spend the majority of their breeding life in places like Greenland, Norway, Svalbard, Novaya Zemlya and even an island off Russia. During migration they can be found in Scotland, Netherlands, and Germany. When they do show up in North America they are seen only in the East, from Labrador to Michigan.