Short Walk on my Short Work Day

I had some lieu time to take, about 3 hrs, so I got to leave work at noonish Friday. I was excited as I'd be home long before dark time and we could do a walk on a weekday, which is always enjoyable.

Well, it certainly was Not +12 like Wednesday, in fact, with the wind chill it was -18 lol! We did go, kind of halfway hoping we'd see a Sawhet owl that 3 different people we've run into have mentioned they'd spotted. Typically, I am not one for going out specifically to look for something as I enjoy the walks for the walks first, then love the surprise of seeing something cool or interesting or exciting. Otherwise, there is that chance of being disappointed because one didn't see what they hoped to see - it's like that for me anyway.

Well, we got there and a guy had his shepherd running loose in the area where my boyfriend mentioned the owl is seen usually. So, no way was I going to walk around there. We figured we'd look a bit on the way back to our car. Venturing into another area, we startled a deer in the small tree and bush area, which scared the crap out of me at first. What a beautiful and large animal it was. It ran and we saw that down below in the valley, it joined a group of about 4 or 5 other deer and they headed away. I'd never seen deer there and was surprised by coming upon one.

In a different area, we happened to spot the Great Horned owl (not me though, my eyesight tends to suck). It was nice to see that it seemed fine and was still present as we'd not seen it for a while. It was dozy, turning its head slowly in the direction of some far off sound. They are always so high up that getting a photo of them is very difficult with my lens. Seeing it here, you'd think we were very close but at the height they usually are, I can barely see them with my naked eye. Nice to have a couple shots though, to recall in the future how lucky we were to have seen them.

We never looked for the Sawhet even though the guy and his dog were gone because we were freezing so we booted it back to the car and went home to make dinner and watch a movie.

Osprey Nest in Beaverton, Ontario

Had the opportunity to go to a friends' cottage this past weekend. They told us about a nest near by, on the way in to town, along the shores of Lake Simcoe. We got there and grabbed some shots. I was not sure what the birds were, just knew they were birds of prey. I had not seen Ospreys up close, only flying in the distance near where we live, and though we looked them up once, I could not say 100% that these were Osprey. Once we got home, I ID'd them again online.

We saw one hunting over the lake at the cottage, as well as a Blue Heron landing and fishing 2 docks down.