Great Grey Owl

This has been a big winter for rarities in the Adirondacks, what with the Ross's Gull at Tupper Lake, and now some Great Grey Owls at Massena.

And no, I didn't see any of these birds.

However, there is a Great Grey on my life list just the same. Back when my next younger brother was finishing up college in Ft. Collins, CO, my significant other at the time and I went out with my truck to bring his stuff home.

I had never been so far west before...and haven't since..and it was quite an adventure, fraught with flat tires, and high altitude, which is not the friend of the old Chevy carburetor, and many other interesting phenomena.

Not the least of these were the birds. We saw Magpies, Golden Eagles, Steller's Jays. Grey Jays, Clark's Nutcrackers and one morning at dawn, a Great Grey Owl.

Alas, I didn't even have my glasses on, just got up from the camp bed in the back of our truck and peeped out the window to see him roosting on the picnic table right next to us. He was so different from anything I had seen or imagined at the time that it took me all day to get him ID'd. What a great bird! I don't need photographs because he is imprinted forever on my brain.