Checking In On My Owl Friends

I got so much done yesterday that today looked like a great day to go see the owls. They are only 10 minutes from my house, so it was easy to get up and get my butt out the door in a timely manner. I got to Twin Lakes by 7:00 am and headed down the trail to the nest. I knew Cher was in the nest but it was still too dark to see her. So I looked around for Sonny. I soon found him a short ways down the trail in one of his favorite spots.

He's watching something flying over him. Both owls are very aware of their surroundings, so I see them do this all the time.

I got a few pics but knew the light would be better in a few minutes. So I wandered over to the lakes. The snow covered mountains were amazing!

I walked back to where Sonny was and now the light was much better! He is one handsome dude!

5 years of practice with many missed shots allowed me to score this flight shot! Sweet! When I first met the owls, I was blown away by how fast they could fly. They have given me lots of opportunities to hone my skills and today it all came together!

This pic shows how fast they are! This is the next shot I got after the clean shot. Even shooting at 1/250th of a second, it was not fast enough to get a focused shot....

Sonny flew over to his other favorite spot near the nest. So I took a look and could get a peek at Cher in the nest. They made the nest a bit deeper this year so you can barely see her. And notice the work they did to plug up the holes with sticks and twigs. Very cool! 
The deeper nest may effect getting owlet pics as they will be a lot bigger before they can peek over the edge of the nest. It's fine for me as my favorite type of pics are when they leave the nest. And maybe the owl paparazzi will lose interest and go on their way :)

So as I'm getting pics of Cher, a bird flies up to harass Sonny. I assumed it was a crow as I see them harass him all the time. But I quickly realized it was sharp shinned hawk! Very cool! This may be the same one I see each summer and he does like to pester Sonny.

 As you can see Sonny is a pretty chill dude. So he ignored him until the hawk finally lost interest and flew off.
I said thanks for the great pics and headed back to the car.

Walden ponds is not far from Twin Lakes, so I popped over to see what was going on.
There was a pair of pintails having breakfast. In this pic you can see why they are called pintails.....

And here's what I usually see.....

I walked over to the small pond just west of the main pond. A group of ring necked ducks were enjoying the beautiful day!

And this robin flew up to say hi!

Then I drove over to the far east pond. There was a pair of golden eyes......

A pair of redhead ducks...

There was also a large group of widgeons. The guys were courting the gals and these two got into a tussle....

Here is the winner with his gal!

And he is pretty proud of himself!

What a fun time! I was home by 9:30am. Ate a quick breakfast and then Hazel got to go swimming at the rez! The ice melted the other day, so she was very excited to be a swimming dog!

Thanks for reading!