We ended up arriving in the location shortly after 10 a.m. We continued along a road slowly, scanning near and far for lumps sitting on top of the snow. Not too long after getting to the area, a car was coming up behind us. We pulled over, completely expecting it to blow past us as cars normally do on these journeys. But this car stopped next to us, as if they wanted to talk. It was a friend of ours, Tina! She was out to look for the same thing we were, and so we decided that we would lead the way, and tell her if we found one.
Well, that took all of a couple of minutes! Continuing down the road slowly, a large bump emerged in a corn field atop a pile of snow. No doubt, Snowy Owl #1! We stopped just long enough to take a look, and snap some photos, then kept moving on our way as Tina stayed a bit longer to enjoy it.
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| Snowy Owl #1 |
Coming up to the end of the road, we stopped at the stop sign, wondering if we should take a right or a left. Something at the top of a tall pine answered that question for us! Snowy Owl #2 was waiting for us up ahead, and boy was she beautiful!
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| Snowy Owl #2 |
From there, we continued along to the next crossroad, and then jumped over to the crossroad for a little bit. Coming up on a stand of trees, we could see a driveway up ahead, and instinctively, I turned to see the house. I saw that and more as we cleared the trees!
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| Snowy Owl #3 |
That was just incredible, like opening a present on Christmas! The next crossroad had a corn crib visible along it, and so I used my binoculars to check the rooftop from afar. Yep, there it was! Owl #4 was there, so we went that way to get a photo.
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| Snowy Owl #4 |
Another pass around where we had already been confirmed that owls 1, 2 and 3, were still at least very close to where we originally saw them. Then it was on to a new section that we hadn't checked. Coming up to an intersection, we saw a couple of vehicles pulled over on the left, and so we went to see what they saw. It was Snowy Owl #5!
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| Snowy Owl #5 |
From here, we went back to see if we could find our friend Tina, who had apparently gotten a bit lost in an area to the west of us. Try as we might, all we found were the Snowies we had already seen, so we decided to just continue our search for more. I spotted some cars, the same ones from before, lined along a road to our right, and quickly spotted why they were there sitting on a fence post. Snowy Owl #6, which was the most active one up until that point!
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| Snowy Owl #6 |
The other cars turned around and left, but we were also joined by Tina, who managed to find her way back to the area. In all of their excitement, the photographers forgot to do something a birder/birdwatcher should never forget to do, and that is check the other side of the road. Right across the road from Snowy #6 was Snowy #7!
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| Snowy Owl #7 |
From here, we didn't know where to go. We had checked most of the area, and came up with seven Snowy Owls! But as we back-tracked, right behind those photographers again, a large bird flushed from a tree on the roadside. The photographers missed it again, as Snowy #8 gave a spectacular flight show while it tried and failed to re-perch in the tree. It later settled on landing on a nearby farm structure.
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| Snowy Owl #8 |
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| Snowy Owl #8 |
And so, we had seen 8 Snowy Owls in a little more than 2 hours time! It was after this encounter, that I received a text from a fellow birder about 5 White-Winged Scoters that had shown up on the Fox River, which is in Kane County. My big year in Kane had been struggling for the past two weeks, so we booked it all the way in to Geneva, and got them! That was species #57 for my big year! Here is a photo of the lone adult male present.
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| White-Winged Scoter Adult Male |
A female Common Merganser allowed for better shots up at the dam, as it swam past.
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| Female Common Merganser |
And that concluded what was a great day of birding and photography! It also concluded what was a VERY Snowy week in Illinois indeed!
Brendon Lake
Holy smokes :-)
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