A while ago, a good friend of mine called me and asked: “How would you like to go on a wild woolly weekend?”. Naturally, I asked what he had in mind. The request came at the beginning of December, so I had no idea what he was thinking of.
He had in mind to go on a long weekend trip to the north of Manitoba in search of Great Grey Owls and anything else we could shoot.
I didn’t need any more information than that. I rented a comfortable car to sleep in (more or less) to save on overnight costs and gas. Then the weekend arrived, we loaded the car and we were off to the north. The drive there was quite uneventful and the evening we spent on a parking lot at Ponton, MB.
The next day we set off to find our “prize”, the Great Grey Owl in the wild of the north. Since this is now some time ago, I decided to post the itinerary as well.
We travelled along HWY 10 and HWY 39, putting in some serious mileage as well as getting good shots of the goal of the trip, Great Grey Owls.
Hunting
Yet, most of my pictures of this trip turned out to be sub-par with the camera gear I had at the time. Daylight was scarce up there, and many of the pictures could be considered low-light pictures. To keep things as sharp as possible, a higher ISO was required. But the camera was not willing to deliver more than mediocre-quality shots.
Coming in low
Come in Adobe Lightroom with the new AI Denoise last April, and the pictures are suddenly a lot more usable. As long as I can spare 6-7 minutes per picture to do the noise removal and nothing else.
Attentive Great Grey Owl
The pictures finally turned out to be nice after all. Apart from the Denoise and some basic adjustments for contrast and exposure, these shots are as they were shot at the time. We “bagged” some 13 Great Grey Owls that first day of the trip (the road to this was mostly at night, so that didn’t count).
Grey Jay
The next day, we started close to Pisew Falls, where I got my first Grey Jay. This one was hungry and after our breakfast. Sitting on my tripod at first, it was eyeing my breakfast sandwich. So I put it down to shoot the bird. After all, that was what we were there for. After this single shot it allowed me, the bird took off with the ham from the sandwich, leaving me with dry bread. So much for good manners…
Anything down there?
This day, again did not disappoint in the owl department. Owls were kind of “everywhere” and we had plenty of possibilities to get good pictures. That was despite the low-light situation for my camera.
Hunting Great Grey Owl
Watching owls hunt is a fantastic pastime as you can see how they get their food. If they find enough food, they completely ignore anyone in the neighbourhood, although we never approached the owls closer than 40-50 meters away. Anything closer still goes against our ethics with birds. Unless they come closer to us, that's a different matter.
The ride home
The last day was to be again a day for mostly driving. Coming from Flin Flon, the road was long to Winnipeg. Some of the vistas, though were hard to pass up on. Several times we stopped on the side of the road to shoot the landscape.
Duck Mountains
By the evening, we were tired and still far from home. Half asleep in the passenger’s seat I dozed off.
Holy Eucharist Ukrainian Catholic Church
But something caught my eye and I yelled: “STOP!, look at that sight!”. For many people, this is a well-known church, but for someone who never comes along that road, this was something to not pass up on. The Holy Eucharist Ukrainian Catholic Church, long abandoned, serviced the area. Today it is in bad shape and probably looks worse than in this picture.
After that, it was nightfall, and taking pictures was no longer an option. We arrived home in the night, each with a few thousand pictures to go through in the next few days.
It’s a weekend I will not forget unless my brain gives up. Oh, and there are no double pictures of owls in this post, they are all from different birds.
Until next time…