After thinking we couldn’t top Day 1, on Day 2 we did! Day 2 turned out to be a really great “Great” day. We had four successful photography encounters with Great Gray Owls starting before 9 AM and finishing late in the afternoon with this one that we followed down the road and around the corner as he hunted for voles. He changed perches about six times, and he finally did catch a vole and swallowed it whole in three gulps. Then, after spending more than an hour and a half with us while he let us photograph him, he flew into the dense forest and disappeared from our view. We’ve had tremendous fortune finding Great Grays this trip. The cold temperatures have been daunting but when you’ve got a Great Gray in your viewfinder, you forget the cold and focus on the subject so minus 21 degrees doesn’t seem so cold. It was -21 when we stopped before 9 AM to photograph the first Great Gray of the day. Because of the nature of their habitat, the backgrounds are often busy, unattractive, and distracting. Sometimes the owls choose perches in deep shade or in contrasty light and with shadow on their bodies. But we can’t choose where they perch so we have to figure out what works to get a good shot. This was the best background we had, a kind of mottled gray and orange from the birch trees that were a far enough in the distance that they dissolved into abstract colors and shapes. Unfortunately, the deciduous shrub on which he perched had small twigs that obscured his face much of the time. One specific twig was of great concern to several of the photographers around me who grumbled that they couldn’t get a shot from any angle and kept moving to find a place where they could eliminate the twig. Unfortunately, there was no place that was possible. I just waited until he turned his head enough that both eyes were between the v formed by the twigs. And, lucky for me, that happened at the same time he decided to look straight at me.