Eagle Eyed Visitors.

[Bob Carriere]

My wife is am amateur photographer..... she has been doingds owls in WInter..... the Snowy Owl amd the Grey Grey.....but they come on a cycle..... this years was the SNowy Owl....last year none could be found but Great Great were plentiful. she usually photogra[h them at day break in waist deep snow and -30 C.

This one she called Bart was a chance encounter in our back yard...... she calls him and he comes repeatedly to pick up his live mice..... 3 or 4 at a sitting. He literaly comes within a few inches of Joyce.

On some encounters with Great Grey she has actually petted the bird while he was stationary in from of her.

We are hoping that he will stay for the summer.... he is a a young yearling and may not have mated yet.

I have my CMPs and Joyce has her camera equipment and the Owls.

Cheers

[colin jones]

Tony, a very nice shot. Even more rare these days is what he's sitting on. It would be "I think" a 1960ish Hills Hoist from the days when every house had one. These days you wouldn't fit one in with the size of the back yards.

[Lynn Eades]

Colin,Most back yards in "Na Zealun" used to sport them as well. (a Hills hoist that is) We had the big one with the wind up gearbox.

BTW. N.Z. had the worlds biggest raptor (The Haast Eagle) until he was starved into extinction (by the demise of the Moa)
He would have been something to see The females were bigger, an some would possibly have reached a 3 metre wing span. It appears they were maybe 40 % bigger in the body for a given wing span, than other eagles.

[colin jones]

Hi Lynn, we too had the big wind up gearbox type. There's probably still lots of them out there as they were definitely built to last or should I say "something to hang on to"

[Tony Wheeler]

Of course these days the Hills hoist has been rediscovered by a new generation, used in conjunction with another iconic Australian invention in a variation of the popular Australian TV game show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqFFyW01FXA


Wheel of Fortune.jpg