Owls

Continuing on with this weeks birthday celebration we had two owls that where like book ends in the 2012 calendar. The January photo, above, was of a northern hawk owls. These are owls that typically live in boreal forests. We see some in northern Minnesota, especially in the winter time when some of the younger birds migrate south in search of better hunting. They are diurnal so they are often active during the day which makes them much easier to photograph. I photographed this bird at the Sax Zim Bog in March.

December featured this little saw-whet owl. Saw-whets nest up in southern Canada but migrate to the northern United Sates during the winter. At Hawk Ridge in Duluth, MN they often catch and band hundreds of these birds as they migrate south in October. A few usually end up in south eastern Minnesota over the winter and if we are lucky we get a chance to see one. This bird spent a couple of days in the backyard of a Twin Cities birder. he was nice enough to let the rest of the birding community come into his yard to get a peak.