End of the Weekend

(January 3rd) For my last weekend day, I didn't have too much time since I also had to make the 6 hour drive back. I headed out to where the waxwings were yesterday but they were not there when I arrived. Instead I found a flock of Wild Turkey. They are great looking birds in the snow. Fortunately today it was white and snowy so the contrast was low enough to capture them in the snow.

As I waited around for the waxwings, I saw this barge go through the lake. I was flabbergasted both at the long size of the barge, but more so that somehow it found an extremely narrow channel of open water through the ice. If the weather stays as it was for this weekend it will be impassable very soon.

The waxwings never showed up in the time I could wait. I did see this White-breasted Nuthatch. It paused to look around for a little bit before heading to a feeder at a house nearby.

I headed down to my last stop of the trip. Throughout the Upper Peninsula I had seen many fields that had these rolls of hay gathered up. They usually were left to stand in the fields throughout the winter. With the snowy conditions, I thought it made for an interesting scene.

The Snowy Owls were out as normal. Most of them were quite inaccessible to photograph, but I was able to get a couple of flight shots of one individual. It wasn't the shot I had imagined, so I guess I'll have to come back to the snow and cold to try again another time!