First Snowy

Not my lifer, as one flew between my wife and I (before we got together romantically) during the last irruption in this area while we were waiting for a work party to start. However, it's the first time I got a good look at one and certainly the first time I got to photograph them. When they do show up, it's certainly not a challenge, since they're most cooperative subjects. The weather forecast for today was promising, so I decided to take a day of vacation and we headed for Damon Point at Ocean Shores, WA. As reported the owls were there. We saw seven and at least a dozen fellow photographers on a partly sunny, cold and windy morning. If you go, they were on driftwood in a grassy area at the far South West tip-just keep on the ocean side beach until you get to the end.

Interestingly, all the birds we saw were either juvenile or female-no adult male plumage.

This one is obviously not stressed for food, but might be having trouble getting enough sleep with all the attention it's getting.

1D4, 500mm f4 ISL + 1.4 TC, Black Widow on Gitzo legs, f7.1, 1/1600, iso 400, Av mode with -2/3 adjustment, minor tweaking of white balance, cropped to 13.2 MP, normal processing in CS4, taken at 9:21 am, today.

Your comments and criticisms are always appreciated.

Thanks for looking,