In December 2014, I went on a five day trip to the Duluth, MN area to try my luck at photographing Great Gray and Snowy Owls while Gowri and Aditya went to India to visit her parents during winter break. These are two owls I'd been wanting to see for many, many years. On the 2nd and 3rd days of my trip, I hired Michael Hendrickson (who started the Sax Zim Bog birding festival) as my guide and 2014 turned out to be a great year for Snowy Owls. The winter of 2013 was a major eruption of Snowy Owls and so luckily 2014 was seeing an echo eruption which often occurs since the large number of owls born during the eruption return to their winter territories. In the days we looked for Snowies we saw 7, 8 and 11! Apparently some years there may be only one Snowy in the Lake Superior area making it very difficult to find but this was not the case. The challenge for me was that many Snowy Owls are banded and marked with shoe polish in the Lake Superior area for research (making for bad photos) and they are also typically juveniles. Therefore, finding an unmarked bird or a mature bird (much whiter than the immatures) was the challenge. Getting shots of Snowies hunting or in flight would prove difficult. I was told this would be tough unless one baits them with mice and this was something I didn't want to do. The first birds we saw were juvenile and marked (with shoe polish on his head so they can be counted) on a cloudy day but I was still super excited: (Lo-Res) (Hi-Res). The next day, we kept looking and we got a non marked Snowy with a beautiful banded pattern and those glowing yellow eyes (Lo-Res) (Hi-Res). Finally, on the last day, we came across a beautiful mature male who was almost entirely white. We saw him before dusk so he was still groggy and could barely keep those beautiful eyes open: (Lo-Res) (Hi-Res). I figured my Snowy Owl experience was complete with the gorgeous mature male but the best was still to come. The skies has cleared up so finally I had a blue sky for the background if we could find another Snowy. We found an unmarked, almost mature male perfectly lit by the evening light. I kept my camera on him and unbelievalbly he dove, caught a meadow vole and ate it and I managed to capture most of it! (Hunting Sequence Lo-Res) (Hunting Sequence Hi-Res). It was very satisfying to know that without baiting them I still managed to get great shots of this amazing hunter. A challenge to photographing Snowies is they become active as the light to photograph them diappears. But a bonus is shots at sunset are possible: (Lo-Res) (Hi-Res). Here is a slideshow of these shots: (Slideshow).
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