It's been a very long time since I've written anything on here--I feel lazy for not keeping up with it, but, it's not like I don't have other things occupying my time : ) I do believe that I left off with my weekend excursion up to Boundary Bay in British Columbia at the end of February. For my wildlife ecology class (which I am enjoying MUCH more than expected!) we were assigned to write a term research paper on our choice of animal from a list Pacific Northwest species she had for us. I chose the snowy owl--no, not because of Harry Potter, I swear!--but because I think they are really really pretty birds and I had never seen one (besides at Northwest Trek) and thought it would be cool to learn more about them. Part of our assignment includes making a poster of our research to "present" (i.e. stand next to it and answer questions) during PLU's Academic Festival at the end of the semester. I thought to myself, I wonder how close to us snowy owls can be found? The mountains, maybe? If I was going to have to make a poster with pictures I sure wanted the pictures to be my own if possible : ) So, I sought out to find where I might be able to go see these owls in their natural environment. I stumbled across a blog of a man named Marc Hoffman (Songbirdphoto.com) who had recently seen and taken photos of snowy owls in British Columbia, so I emailed him to ask if he could possibly give me directions to where he was at. Thankfully he did and the following weekend I headed out to Boundary Bay/Surrey B.C. with my best friend to see some owls!
Of course the whole experience was cool (I'm pretty sure Mel enjoyed it too lol), I was excited taking my first trip to Canada--but hands down the best/funniest part of the trip was crossing the border. I have the enhanced drivers license so I didn't need anything else, but Melanie didn't have that or a passport. We kept getting conflicting information about the required documents to cross the border from the Canadian side and from the U.S. side (we found out later the passport law had been in effect since 2009, whoops : P) so we were armed with her birth certificate, SS card, license, and who knows what else! I got super nervous when we got to the border thinking they weren't going to let her across, so much so that when the border guard asked "Where is home?" all I could think of to say was Washington, and even that took me a few seconds *lol* Then when he asked what we were doing in Canada I told him we were headed to Boundary Bay to see the snowy owls. "....seriously?" was his response and I kinda laughed, said I was doing a research paper on them for school and decided to see them in person. "Well that's cool I guess.....but you're seriously like 25 years younger than anyone else coming across to go look at them!" Coming back into the U.S. the border patrol asked what we did in Canada, told him the same story, and no joke, got the same response from him! So birders are all old huh? : )
Anyway, we got a good laugh out of it, no mention of Melanie not having a passport, and off to Surrey we went....after I had to give up my very large can of pepper spray--thanks, Canada, for sending two girls on without a weapon! ; ) We dropped some stuff at the hotel and then headed right out to Boundary Bay. We totally lucked out with the weather. Aside from it being SUPER windy on Saturday, the temperature was pretty tolerable and it didn't rain--can't complain about that on the coast in February. There were actually lots of people out on the trial looking at and taking pictures of the owls. I don't know what I was really expecting the area to look like, but I was definitely expecting trees/woods of some sort. We were just off the shores of the ocean, in a very flat and open area with lots of washed up logs and wetlands between the trail and the edge of the water. I hadn't done much research on the owl up to this point, but it turns out they are ground nesters and prefer vast, open expanses like these. It was beautiful. I love the coast as it is, but there was just something about the area that was really neat. And the owls--most were literally 25 feet away from the trail perched on the logs!!! So. Awesome.
This was a rare treat and I was so excited that I got to see them. The snowy owls experience what are called irruption migrations that happen when there is a large increase in their population (usually due to an increase in lemming populations in the tundra) and so there are more owls migrating south as a result. In North America their summer habitat is in the tundra of northern Canada where they breed and lay their eggs, and their winter habitat is usually in Central southern Canada, north central and north east of U.S. In irruption years (which happen it seems every 6-8 years, but isn't a regular pattern) they expand their migration range further south and closer to our coasts. Some years snowy owls have even been spotted in Texas!
Other than that I have just been chugging away at school, work, and trying to get at my camera when I can, though the weather hasn't been the best. I have done a couple of photo shoots--one of an adorable little girl who was about 3 weeks old at the time, and then had some fun with my nephews Joey and Van one night watching them while mom was at volleyball. We did some Easter pictures and Van's 6 month pictures. I've also got a couple of photo shoots lined up the last 2 weekends of this month that I am excited about!
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| Hands down my favorite pic from NW Trek! |
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This was after cake, chips, earlier jello, some frosting covered marshmallows, and hot dogs... ; ) |
Until I have more pictures to share, hope you've enjoyed those in this post! : )
