(photo of snowy owl courtesy Wikimedia and Diego Delso)
I’ve lived in places with cold snowy winters much of my life. I know I’ve coexisted with snowy owls, but they are really hard to spot in the wild and I have only one memory of ever seeing one. I was driving across the plains of southern Alberta, in a beautiful valley with a small river and was driving rather slowly through a construction zone. I glanced to my side and there was a snowy owl flying beside me, just a few yards away, as if keeping pace with my pickup truck. The owl flew along side me for at least a mile, before we went our separate ways, but it was one of those memories that sticks with you.
Snowy owls are known for their almost pure-white winter plumage, bright yellow eyes, and rounded heads without ear tufts. During the summer their color changes, with gray and brown mixing in with the white to help them with camouflage. They live far north much of the year and are well adapted to the cold, even having feathers on their feet. They are quite beautiful, I think.
I’ve mixed one of my own photos with several much better photos from Wikimedia. My photo (above) was taken many years ago at Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg. I came across it as I was going through some of my old photographs.
