Ravens chasing snowies and snowies being sneaks!

Chris and I went out for a few...okay several hours today.  We left at around 8 am, had an adventurous time at the gas station consisting of an overflowing gas tank, washing windows with a faulty squeegee, giving up and getting a car wash and a panic attack over a possibly forgotten camera battery.  Once that was all sorted out we headed northwest of Toronto in search of wildlife. 

We knew there were snowy owls in one area and it was my time to prove that I was no longer wildlife repellent.  The pressure was on, but since we had a lot of time on our hands I had a feeling good things would happen.  Click on any photo to enlarge:

Could he be cuter?  See ya!

Check out the nails!

Their wingspan is 4.5 to 5.5 feet wide. 

We started to drive around and were happy to see snow.  We haven't had much snow at all this winter and this field was pristine:

We couldn't figure out what this machine was doing.  I thought he was getting a jump on spring planting but he was ploughing a snowmobile trail:

Ugh, the hay is STILL in the barn:

Snow buntings were next but we couldn't get too close:

And another snowy!

As we were admiring the snowy we heard croaking.  We turned around and saw a Common Raven chasing a white bird...which turned out to be another snowy!!

That was so exciting!  We didn't expect to see a raven, let alone one that brought us another snowy!  And even better, a few minutes later we saw a second raven!

We thought it was an eagle initially but weren't disappointed that it was a raven. 

Our final snowy took off and flew across the field:

But wait!  After I got home and was checking out my pictures, look at who was on the top, right corner:

Snowy number 7!!!  Actually it was #5 because we saw #6 perched on a pole and #7 in a field after we started heading back.  But without the picture we would never have noticed.  I had him in a couple of pictures and Chris did as well. 

What a fun day!  This was my first full weekend off in years, I rarely get a day off let alone a full weekend so it was nice of the birds to co-operate!