Once winter starts, the snowy owls come down regularly to the Holland marsh area with what I assume is abundant food around the carrot farms in the area.
On our first winter back in Canada after 5 years down in South Carolina we were not really looking forward to the prospect of weeks of below -30 degrees Celsius, but we were looking forward to some hikes in the parks… hopefully after a big snowfall.
Our worries about the cold were mostly unrealized this year, but that also meant that there were few good snowfalls for us to get out hiking with the cameras. We managed to get out a few times looking for snowy owls and got to see a northern hawk owl for the first time.
This northern hawk owl was a real winter treat, pretty unusual for this far south in Ontario. It did keep birders happy for a couple of months feeding in a local marshy area close to a small town.
For hiking close to home we found that Short Hills provincial park was good for a morning hike with a couple of pretty creeks and a very pretty waterfall.
A very icy version of the falls in Short Hills provincial park on a rather nippy day.
The hiking trails in the park are pleasant but the views of the waterfall from the trail are certainly underwhelming. If you get down into the valley the view is so much more interesting.
Walking up the valley through the creek is much easier when mostly frozen.
My Christmas present to myself this year was the new DJI mavic mini. We did get one chance to learn a bit how to fly it on a rather cold day in an old quarry that is now a conservation area near Port Colborne. I can’t wait to get some more experience with it, the perspective of some of the shots is quite interesting…much learning to do both in the flight part and in producing some interesting footage. I will explore this in another post, likely because it is going to take me a while to get good enough at using the drone to make an article worth reading and hopefully some footage worth seeing.
Hiking along the edge of the quarry on a very cold, windy and snowy day.
That quarry did give us some pretty fun shots on a very cold and windy day hike. This is an old limestone quarry with a couple of huge ponds in the middle. Everywhere you go you can see fossils in the rocks along the paths and on the edges of the ponds.
Pond in the midst of freezing. With only a few cold snaps even these ponds didn’t freeze over for long this year.
We did manage to get up north to Algonquin once this winter. A hike along the Oxtongue river at Ragged Falls gave us some of the most beautiful winter river and waterfall scenes I have ever witnessed. An afternoon hike in Algonquin on Mizzy Lake trail was interesting, but we definitely over-dressed for that hike and came back rather sweaty and with no interesting nature sightings. Still hoping for a winter encounter with a Pine Martin.
serene winter scene along the Oxtongue river just above Ragged Falls. On a cloudy day with little colour anywhere I thought this looked more appealing in black and white.
We did get a few bird sightings out at the Spruce Bog trail. A spruce grouse was resting in a tree just a few steps from the parking lot. While we waited for it to wake up and get more active a group of Canada jays came by looking for a few handouts. Also known as Grey jays, they can be quite the little thieves and are very curious.
Spruce grouse tugging at some needles in Algonquin Park
Grey Jay (Canada Jay), always a little mischievous but still rather cute.
Funny enough a little red squirrel that we came across near the end of the trail held our attention darting back and forth across branches and finally enticing us to drop a few seeds for it to collect and hide.
cute little red squirrel with little red mittens
Our first winter is now over, it definitely was not a harsh one. Our last couple of weekend road trips before the corona virus lockdown were spent in what is locally referred to as Shortyville. A group of farmers fields where there is a good chance to see short eared owls hunting just before the sun goes down. These shoots gave me a great chance to get used to the new camera and lens combo for in flight action shots. This will likely be the subject of my next article. Both the owls and the camera gear as I get used to using the new Sony A7RIV with the 200-600 for in flight shots.
This hasn’t been the winter we thought we were going to have, it has been consistently warmer and wetter than expected, but I think we have managed to take advantage of the interesting moments we could. Now that we are not going far for our nature shoots, at least until the world gets back to something that seems more normal, I’m going to have to get a little more consistent with these posts.