This was one of my all-time favorite bird encounters.
We were down in Klamath, on this day, skirting the frozen lake on a "road" that was scarcely more than a foot path carved into the precipitous incline that passed for the "shore" of the lake. In the ice/snow. In a rental car.
We pulled off at a wide spot in the road, because I had spotted a blob in a tree that looked like it might be something I should get a closer look at. So I fired off some pics of the "blob," magnified them in my photo playback screen on my dslr, and realized we were looking at a tiny owl!
And so, of course, I had to spend thirty minutes and about 100 shots trying for decent, if not THE PERFECT, shots. Which proved difficult with the equipment I had at the time--just a 70-300mm telephoto zoom on my Nikon D40. Don't get me wrong, it is a nice lens, for which I had shelled out $1100 (in 2008 dollars...) But Little Dude was almost just outside the range where I could get good shots to magnify and crop enough to produce a decent final image of what exactly I was shooting at.
But, though this isn't a GREAT picture, the encounter itself was magical. Here he is. The "Little Dude."
Little Dude has a very steady look. Just you wait until a mouse comes by.
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