Finding The Rare Birds

In my previous post, I mentioned about the rare birds (rare in our place, that is)  that we searched for. Oh, yes, we found them!

It was hubby who actually discovered them when he went  to that biotope while I was working. The snow was so thick that he made a trail with his snow shoes for the benefit of those who would visit the place later, as news of such new sightings spread quickly among the bird enthusiasts.

The first that he saw was the Eurasian three-toed woodpecker, a lifer for him and for me later. It was so beautiful that I wanted to see it too, so I asked him to take me there one day after my work, which is just around 30 minutes drive from our city. 

Eurasian three-toed woodpecker

Before that, however, one of our friends asked hubby to take him there, and that's when he spotted a huge bird flying through the thick forest, and when they peered through the spotting scope, the bird was confirmed be a great grey owl, another lifer for hubby and me.

the woods in winter-early spring

When it was my turn to be taken there, our friend and his wife also drove there ahead. There was also another man who arrived later. We searched for the two birds. The woodpecker wasn't around, but the owl was seen leaving a tree. We waited until it would come back. When I finally saw it, the back was turned toward me, but I took a shot anyway since the back is also beautiful. Then I had to run to the other side where our friends were, but when I arrived, it had already flown to the other side of the trail, hiding somewhere.

We were about to give up and get into our car when the owl suddenly emerged from the woods and flew across the trail and perched on a tree some meters away from us. It sat there long enough for us to take a few shots. Since it was getting dark that time, I couldn't capture it clearly. This photo may not be my dream shot of an owl, but at least, I have a new life bird. That's exciting too! I learned too that there were actually two of them here, and this was the male,  smaller than the female, which is the world's largest owl in length.

Two days later, we went back there in hopes to find the owl again, so I could take better pictures. But this time, it was the three-toed woodpecker that appeared, and the owl was nowhere in sight. Isn't that great too? It was a male one pecking on a tree, not minding us at all. 

And then it flew to another tree. We followed, and got a big surprise when we saw another one, a female, on that same tree! What a bonus that was! We were so close to them as we had our cameras clicking non-stop until we had our fill.

On that second week of March, I saw two new life birds! Funny  thing is I haven't really counted how many life birds I've seen....ha-ha-ha!!! I'm just thrilled every time  I see a new one. But someday, I'll get into counting.

I'm including pictures of the same place when we visited it again on the spring equinox. We may not have seen the birds that time, but we had fun having snacks on the snow banks.

Now that spring is here, more migrating birds have come back, and I hope to find new rare birds. 

But we're also waiting for the awakening of the spring blooms.

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