From Birds to Cows

That title isn’t quite what you think it may be.  This past weekend we went out into the cold, wind and snow that came up to mid calf on me to see if we could find any birds to photograph.  So I went out equipped with a lens with an attached teleconverter that gave me a reach of 560mm maximum.

Will share the wintry birds later.

After finding the little winter birds in one park, we left to go to the reservoir to see if Snowy the Owl was still around.  Either she had moved someplace else, blended in very well with the snow or had packed her bags and headed home; we didn’t see her.  As we were at the reservoir anyway, we decided to head to the beach area where we had seen many water fowl and seagulls during warmer weather just to see if there was anything  interesting to photograph.

And that’s when we found the cows.

Cows is really C.O.W.S – Central Ohio Wind Sports; a catchy and memorable name.  On the lake where gulls like this one hung out all summer and fall were now humans on snow and ice.

Humans flying around on skis and snowboards snowkiting; something I had never seen before but found fascinating to watch.  I asked one of the members how they knew that the ice was safe enough for their fun and was told someone goes out and drills a hole and… well you know the rest from there.   There were even some people out ice fishing that day.

I’ve gone water skiing and wind surfing once but I don’t think I will ever try anything like this.  And they didn’t just zip back and forth with the wind that day, some did tricks and they would also go from the lake to land and then back again.  I think they all knew in some way that this day was probably going to be their last hurrah for kiting in the snow because temperatures are predicted to go up this week above freezing with sunshine.

It’s melting out there already…

Teri📷