Do you see what I see?

I'm betting you don't. I had a mighty hard time seeing what I saw, myself, and I knew I had to be seeing it somewhere.

I was looking for a fox. I saw him or her on Gaetz Drive early in the week, and of course I didn't have the camera. It was too dark to shoot anyway. The fox ran into the trees but only as far as the first two or three, and then he stalked us from behind the trees. Luckily The Creature was on leash at the time. As badass as she is, I'd really hate for her to tangle with a fox.

So every night since, I've taken the same walk, about the same time, with the camera. And of course, no fox.

Tonight, I had gotten past where I saw the fox, and onto the Kiwanis Trail, and let the dog loose, and I was walking on the crunchy snow with the hoods of my two hoodies up, and I thought I heard something. So I stopped and listened for a while, and heard a hound barking in the distance. "Dang," I thought. "It was just a hound."

I resumed walking and then I heard it again. I stopped and listened and didn't hear it.

I resumed walking and I heard it again. And this time when I stopped and listened, I heard it again.

And again.

And again.

So now I'm walking along the trail, with my hoods off for better hearing, trying to triangulate the source of the sound and find a passage back to the road so I can have a look. And it turned out, by coincidence, that the first path I found through the woods back to the road was directly opposite the source of the sound. So once I came out of the trees, I only had to scan the view for a few seconds before I saw IT.

(No, seriously, Pennywise the Clown is in this photo. Srsly.)

Now the problem is: 20:47. No light. DANG! Good thing it's Lent and I've been cutting back on swearing.

So I set the All-Knowing-God Camera for maximum speed: ISO 1600 and exposure down two stops. It was sure to look hideous, but at least it would be fast. Had I maximized it for light, it would have been ugly and blurry and completely worthless.

But I suppose you would like to see what I saw at some point, right?


Now do you see what I see?

Ok, but that's not the great part. The great part happened next, thusly:


Let me highlight it to make sure.


See? TWO great horned owls. Not one, two (2). Two great horned owls. I was aiming at the one sitting on the tree, and the second one flew in from the left. I got two shots before he left again, but in the second one you can't see both owls.


See?

You can't really tell what they're doing in these shots, but you can tell there isn't a nest. They can't have a nest in that tree anyway because first of all, great horned owls are supposed to nest on the ground, and second, great horned owls lay their eggs in February, and third, I've been walking around all winter and I haven't heard or seen any sign of owls. But clearly these two are "together". Otherwise they'd be fighting, and you can clearly see that they're not. The perching one is assuming a pose of submission to the flying one, not fighting. Actually, it totally looks like they're having sex. Otherwise why would the one be right on top of the other like that? If he was just bringing food, he'd have landed on a different branch.

Maybe they're just off to a late start. Maybe they do have chicks somewhere on the ground and have been keeping it on the down-low. Though frankly, I don't think I'm such a bad bird watcher that I'd have missed a mated pair of great horned owls every day for the last 96 days. I mean, they're LOUD.



Well, I guess we'll never know. But the moral is, just because it's too dark to shoot, doesn't mean the camera should stay at home.

And by the way, I did see the fox too, crossing Riverview right by the school. But by then it was really dark and she was moving like the wind, I wouldn't have got a shot even in good light.