Just Out of Reach

It was a beautiful day today here in the Great Pacific Northwest, a hint summer isn’t that far away. I had a great walk around the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge, spending the day with a fellow birder who happened to be a complete stranger.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a great day for photographs. In fact, almost everything I wanted to shoot seemed temptingly out of reach. While it was nice to know that my favorite bird, the Belted Kingfisher, had returned, it would have been nicer if I had been able to get closer than this to get a decent photo.

I nearly got a great picture of this Northern Harrier as it swooped over my head, but ended up only being able to get this picture of it looking back at us to see if it had made an impression by buzzing us, it had.

The greatest non-shot of the day, though was the one of this fabled Snowy Owl, my first sighting of it. Of course, it was so far away I would have needed a $10,000 lens in order to get a decent picture of it, but, take my word for it, that white blob there on the log is, indeed, a Snowy Owl.

It was a rush to see the Snowy Owl at all, no matter how distant.

And, strangely, it’s comforting to know many things in my life still lie just out of reach.

3 thoughts on “Just Out of Reach”

  1. We saw the snowy owls (2 of them) when we were at Nisqually NWR last week. In December, I saw my first snowy owls at Boundary Bay just over the Canadian border (I counted 12 of them, there could have been more). And then last month, we saw one at Fort Stevens State Park on the mouth of the Columbia. It’s a good year for seeing them “down south”, evidently. I never expected to see them in my life, and here in one year I’ve seen fifteen – in 3 different locations. What a blessing.

  2. I have both, Harry, but seldom carry either with me,

    The lens I bought, a fixed length 400m 5.6 lens is generally fast enough to get good quality shots in good light.

    I found when a mounted the camera on a monopod I couldn’t shoot up into the trees, or down into creeks nearly as quickly as I otherwise could.

    The owl shot would have benefited from a tripod, I’m sure.

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