Snowy makes elusive photo subject

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com

The Outagamie County Regional Airport’s owl has been leading me on quite a chase.

It's a snowy owl, an occasional visitor from the arctic who takes a foodie vacation in Wisconsin when its favorite rodent back home, the lemming, falls into short supply.

This has been one of those years, which is odd because so was last year.

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My wife spotted the snowy near the airport first. She was driving down State 96 and saw it on a utility pole.

A week or so later, I was scanning the airport perimeter with jealousy still in my heart, when I saw outstretched wings directly above my truck. The figure was white and it had the unmistakeable wide head of an owl.

Having seen it, my next challenge was to photograph it.

Besides hunting at the airport, the snowy — a female I’m presuming based on the amount of black bars marking her body — was also showing up on a building on the north side of 96 (Wisconsin Avenue). Here again, my wife saw it there first, and also second and third. Driving to work one day, I finally saw the snowy on what appears to be its favorite perch.

It's a large metal building that houses an Oshkosh Truck office. The owl perches at the edge of the roof on the southeast corner of the building. Given how many times we had seen it on the building, I wondered if it was a source of excitement for the people who work there. I stopped and asked an employee in the parking lot -- whose outdoors credentials included driving a Jeep Wrangler -- and she knew nothing about it.

Driving into town one evening last week, I saw the snowy on a street light on 96 by the airport. Again, I had no camera. But the office where I work my day job was close by and the office camera sitting there waiting.

I went and got the camera and switched to the long lens. I drove back to the lamp post where I had seen the snowy. It was still there. The owl, me and a camera were all in the same place at the same time, and the sun was setting behind the pole.

I pulled onto the shoulder, lifted the camera into position and squeezed the shutter button.

Nothing.

The camera had been left in the bag with a dead battery. Argggghh.

Keeping a charge in the battery is the digital equivalent of the old rule that you always left a few frames on the roll of film for the ride home, just in case you came upon something.

My own Nikon D-80 was going to be a constant companion from then on until I got a shot of the snowy. It would only take a day.

Driving home in the snowfall last Friday, I saw the snowy on the airport fence along the south side of 96. I was heading west so I pulled onto the north shoulder and fired off a few frames, mostly of the back of its head as it scanned the airport property for field mice or another lemming substitute.

Then I flipped around into the eastbound lane, pulled past the snowy, got out and braced my elbows on the hood of the truck. I fired one frame after another until the yellow eyes finally swung around my way.

The evening light was dim. Clouds filled the sky and light snow fell creating flat, uncooperative light. But I finally had my shot of a snowy, and Monday would bring another commute through the snowy's vacation property.