Hi My friend Travis and I decided to go to Big Lake after the recent reports by Betsy Bennecke and others of Snowy’s seen there. We took 10 and turned south on 17 as was suggested. We found a snowy owl about a mile or so south of 10 and near one of the irrigation pipes, he was about one hundred to one hundred fifty yards from the road but we could see him with binoculars and we got photos of a fashion of him. There we met Michael Thompson who we talked to for a while and a guy named Jeff but I forgot his last name. Anyway Jeff told us that someone had seen a snowy off of 178th street so we drove over there and Michael Thompson was right behind us . Travis exchanged phone numbers and we decided to go our own way and five minutes later Michael called us to tell us he had spotted a snowy right by the road off of 172nd st. This would be a couple of miles south of highway ten. We all sat there for over half an hour watching this beautiful bird who paid us no heed. A few other cars arrived and Travis and I left but when we came back twenty minutes or so later it was still there. Later we went back to the original bird on cr 17 and he was still there and we saw a red tailed hawk near highway ten. It is wonderful to be seeing the Snowy’s so early in the year. Here is my link to a couple of photos of the one near the road and the red tailed hawk https://www.flickr.com/photos/ronsthoughts/ Ron Taube Coon Rapids ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
