Cheyenne Bottoms Afternoon

The herons were having trouble finding good fishing spots.

As I returned home from Colorado on Monday, I made a detour through Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Preserve. I had seen a number of people saying there were Snowy Owls there, and I have really been wanting to get a picture of one. This is an irregular year, because these arctic dwellers do not show up in the lower plains very often. Over the weekend there had been snow and temperatures plummeted so that the ponds were mostly frozen at the time I was there.

An eagle sitting on the ice and a coyote making the rounds.

A small flock of pelicans landed and looks like they found a little bit of open water.

A great blue heron on its way away from me.

There were lots of hawks out hunting.

Bingo, there is a snowy owl!

When I finally saw the snowy owl, I was thrilled. It was sitting on an island out in one of the ponds and preening itself. I decided to put my 1.4x teleconverter on my 200-500 lens so I could get a little more reach since the owl was sitting quite a ways away from me. After I added that, I was shooting at 700mm. That gave me a little better shot of the owl, but still not great. Time to just be patient and wait for it to fly, hopefully in a direction that I would be able to get some good shots. There was a hawk hunting nearby and I grabbed a few shots of it. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw movement by the owl. It was taking off and heading my way!

The hawk that was hunting near the owl.

The first shot of the owl in flight.

When I got my camera aimed and started taking pictures of the owl in flight, I was thrilled! I was expecting it to veer off and be able to track it for quite a few shots. I was amazed as it kept coming directly at me. It was moving really fast, and was hard to keep focus as it approached. It eventually flew just over and to the right of me perhaps 40 feet away or less. I had my camera in single shot mode, so I was clicking as fast as I could! I’m going to include pictures that aren’t the greatest just to give an idea of what the approach was like.

It was still quite a ways off at this point.

If anything, it seems it was really checking me out, and changed course a little to come closer to me.

Just about a perfect angle of the sun.

By the time I took this picture the owl was starting to just get bigger in the frame.

Just seeing this big bird in flight was thrilling, and seeing it get bigger and bigger was amazing.

Started to have trouble with focus keeping up as this thing shot toward me faster and faster.

This picture is straight out of camera, uncropped.

This is also straight out of camera, unedited, and uncropped. This is the sharpest and closest picture I got. Too bad it was looking away at the time. Ah well.

This is not a good picture, and I was really having trouble tracking this fast moving object as it zipped by me.

The last picture I got. Straight out of camera.

Lots of small birds to be seen.

The herons did not want to move.

After driving down a different road, I discovered where the snowy owl had gone when it flew over me.

After a couple minutes, it took flight again.

The owl flew over the road, and landed on the ice on the other side.

Once more, it took to the air.

This time it landed on a dike, and the blackbirds were swarming in the grasses. I made sure to drive on by so the owl could find a meal before dark.