Finally, The Payoff!

It's taken more than three months, but finally, being rewarded by a very cautious owl was well worth the effort. The Bard owls were both outside the nest and sitting in two different trees about 20 yards apart. Then the female approached the nest tree looking in to the trunk but not going inside. It makes me wonder if the chicks have hatched.

Later, she flew back up into the tree that she was sitting in before approaching the nest. That was the start of her very cautious entry into her nest. She flew back down to the entry and started to poke her head inside, then she pulled her head out while keeping her body in the same position and looked down at the ground. Slowly, she looked into the tree trunk again and then did the same thing all over.
After about fifteen minutes, she looked back into the hole, then looked straight at me with her head swiveled backwards, then into the hole she went. The male never moved but was watching every move the female was making. Her tail feather could be seen indicating that she was once again back on the nest.

It was an amazing site that I have never observed before. I have seen hawks be careful going to the nest, but it's a whole different thing with an owl and to have seen it was a reward and rewarding.

Mr. Owl, The 7-Year Search Is Over.

I've heard about the big owl at White Rock for years. While people tried to describe where he was hanging out, I never saw anyone actually looking for him. In fact, those that tried to explain the area of trees where it was thought he lived, either could not or did not want to reveal the actual location. People sometimes show their own insecurity in such matters because they want a certain location as their own. Find a photographer with a 400 or 600 MM lens on their camera and observe! It's more interesting than watching the duck races at Eddie Gossage's little camp ground north of Dallas International this weekend (alright, I like Eddie, so his little camp ground is formally named Texas International Speedway and the office race is the Duck Commander 500).

Any who (pardon the owl pun), it has just been one of those weeks. I had three fires burning, so Monday was the day to work on putting them out. First, came the battle with Time Warner Cable. For weeks they have advertised that on April 7th that they would be going digital and you needed to pick up an adapter. I did that last week-end, standing in line for the better part of two hours. The adapter set on the  floor in front of my TV until the day before. I put on the adapter and called the number given to me by the TWC lady when I picked up the adapter. An activation number. It was then, that I found out that I was loosing channels. No where had the advertisement advertised that the change to digital would do that. The first call on Monday netted a goose egg. Cable 1, me nothing

By Tuesday, I had regained some strength and it was fire number 2 with Aetna insurance. It appears that Aetna, has a very messed up formulary for medications that they pay for under their coverage. The one drug that has worked better in treatment happens to be one that they have decided not to pay for. It was time to take on Aetna. I filed the appeal. My doctor didn't want to put his neck on the line but didn't like the fact that I was probably going to have to change up the med because Aetna didn't want to pay for it. 72-hours of e-mails and wait, e-mails and more info and wait, Bingo! Aetna called to say that they were going to pay for the drug anyway. Second call on Tuesday netted a win for me and the doc. Big Companies 1; me 1.

Wednesday, fire number 3 was a "life-time guarantee" on a 5.5 Qt glass-covered skillet purchased at Sam's Club 6-years ago.  Normally, I would not even fight something like this, but I know that the vendor had problems with this pan in the past and Sam's  Club, though reluctantly, honored the life-time guarantee. Now, as luck would have it, Sam's is letting their vendor duke it out with past customers. At this point in time, the vendor is sending me a pre-paid label to return the pan for inspection. This fire still smolders in the debate world currently.

Thursday, it was a battle with Walgreen's. I had two refills at the pharmacy. I go in to pick up the one refill that was a partial (Walgreen's didn't have enough stock to fill) The Aetna decision had come down and was now in the system so I submitted the refill on line.While at the pharmacy picking up the partial that was now filled and ready, the pharmacist said that I would have to come back tomorrow because the second refill would have to be a partial as well, since Walgreen's was out of stock to fill the second refill completely. (UPDATE:NBC5 10 April 2015)WALGREEN'S ANNOUNCED THAT IT WILL CLOSE 200 STORES BY 2017 (now we know why I have to make 4 trips for 2 scrips, don't we.)

It was time to clear the head and go look for an owl. After searching for 7-years, finally, I found the owl. He had been driven up higher in the canopy by a 600MM photographer, the sky was getting dark with building thunderstorms in the large grove of trees, but, trying to make lemonade out of lemons, I cranked up the 200MM and just started shooting into the canopy, then, I saw the big owl fly into another tree. The shot is terrible, out of focus and nearly to dark, but who cares...... I photographed the big owl that had, until today, evaded me, unlike the many times I have seen the two bald eagles when others had not. For my patience, Mr. Owl rewarded me with a red cardinal on a car mirror and a lesser hawk feeding on grubs.