Owls at Hecla Island

On February 4th we head up to Hecla Island with Christian Artuso to see if we could see some winter birds. It is a two hour drive, and is located on Lake Winnipeg.
We took a lot of photos, and I have not gone through them yet, so I am just going to make a quick post with a few photos for now.

The first notable bird was a Northern Hawk owl that we saw as we crossed the causeway to the island, though it was a good distance away and we didn't get a good picture of that one.

Northern Hawk Owl

From then on we saw numerous owls, totaling 4 Northern Hawk Owls and 4 Great Grey Owls. We sat in the car watching the Great Grey Owls for a while, waiting for a good photo opportunity. They would take off and fly every once in a while, which made for some great photos.

Great Grey Owl

Great Grey Owl

By looking for 'scaling', that is bark stripped of trees,and listening for tapping, we were able to find a Three Toed Woodpecker. It was a lifer for us! They are very quite elusive, but quite approachable when found. The one we found was pecking on a tree only one foot of the ground, so it made for great pictures.

 Other birds we saw were grouse, both Ruffed and Sharp-tailed.

Sharp-tailed Grouse

Northern Hawk Owl

As we were sitting watching the owls, I decided I could take some short videos to compile together. Here it is:

I still hope to make another post more fully covering our trip, but it might be a bit before I can process all the photos.