Hooting It Up

It's always a great day when I see my owls! :)  We head to Pinson almost every afternoon to start making our rounds to see what we can spot.  Pinson Mounds is a park relatively close to our home and although the focus of the park isn't the wildlife, it has plenty of it to offer.  On a cold day, it's almost a given to find my favorite owl, Ollie, or her mate, sitting in the sun in a tree on the exit road.  On this day, we found just that, but because the owl was sleeping, I knew it would be awhile before any action happened.  And I've experienced one too many days of sitting for hours watching an owl sleep and waiting for wake up time!  So we decided to drive around for a while and go looking for some deer, hawks, coyote, bobcat, bald eagle and whatever else we could possibly stumble upon.

Every time we passed the tree again on the loop, the owl was still sleeping.  And then the sun went down.  As we were making our last round, the owl flew from the tree down into the swamp area by the bridge.  I jumped out to track where it went, since it went down low.  I thought maybe I might get some shots of it getting a meal in the swampy bottom.  I finally found it, perched in a tree in the distance, with a million branches in the way.  Go figure!

For some reason, I lowered the camera.  Possibly because 700mm gets kind of heavy when hand held!  When I did, I glanced up and low and behold, perched right there off the road in front of me, was an owl!  I could tell by the closeness to the road and the calmness of the bird {she usually ignores me like this}, that it was Ollie, the female barred owl I've been photographing for 8 years now.

I said her name a few times, and finally she turned and looked at me.  Yep, it was Ollie for sure!  Ollie is very used to people...she's been in the park a long time.  I often will show her to park visitors who come up while I'm photographing her.  The excitement on their faces when they realize they can see an owl in the wild so close is such fun!  Once there was an older couple walking on the road when I was there.  A woman and her elderly father, who wasn't in the best of health, neither of which had ever seen an owl in the wild, much less so close.  They were able to get photos with their cell phone!  The man was so excited to see her.  I hope that moment with Ollie created a special memory for him.

I have shared the beauty of this bird with so many now...from park staff, to casual walkers, to school children and to so many online.  Every time anyone sees her, it always brings an "Oh!" and a smile to their faces.  Ollie has brought as much joy to them as she has to me!  I have spent hours photographing her in multiple situations over the last 8 years, and it never gets old.  I know she won't be around forever {she appears to be an older bird}, and I want to enjoy every minute I can with her.

As the dusk descended upon the area, Ollie's mate in the distance began to hoot.  And Ollie joined right in.  I love her body pose when she's hooting, the way she leans forward and her entire neck puffs up.  This art I created with her hooting photo is appropriately named "Hooting It Up".  They often hoot right before they hunt.  I was waiting on the hunting, but the darkness became too much for photos, and the park was closing, so it was time to say goodnight.  Thank you, Ollie, for another great evening.  I hope there will be many more!

See A Full Gallery of Ollie's Art Here