Author Archives: Kent Jarrett

Snowy Owls of Lee County Illinois Feb 28th 2015

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After finishing up with the frozen waterfalls of Starved Rock State Park early Saturday Feb 28th due to ice climbers on the falls.  We were already two thirds of the way to Rochelle and had little to no wind and really good light.  Even though I didn’t have all my big glass we decided to buzz on up to see if we could find any of Lee County Snowy Owls that has shown up again this winter.  I only had my new 100-400mm MKii.  I carried it on my Canon 1DX during the hike in Starved Rock in case I found a great horned owl on her nest.

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Six or 7 different owls, 4 or 5 males, and only 2 females way out in the field.  Last year there was only 1 male and 14 females.  I posted the 4 different locations of these photos on ebird.org.

Life is good and I am blessed!

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Frozen Waterfalls of Starved Rock 2015

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The 2014/2015 Eagle season has pretty much been over for a couple weeks now.  We had one last cold snap, and I had reports that the creeks and rivers at Starved Rock State Park were frozen solid enough for me to walk on.  Saturday Feb 28th, Ray, Joe and I headed up to Starved Rock to photograph the Frozen waterfalls.  They are really hard to capture the embedded colors!  You need to see them in real life!  Not really happy with last years photos I took along a tripod this year to do longer exposures and some HDR shots.

We started off in St. Louis Canyon because the Ice Climbers aren’t allowed to climb this one.

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St. Louis Falls looked a lot like last years, so I tried to work some different angles.KJ5D0884_5_6_tonemapped-FrameShop

How does a guy get an angle like this?  Face down on the ice!  A little behind the camera shot taken by Joe.

FullSizeRenderAs I said last year, walking around on solid ice, Yak Trax’s highly recommended! You can clearly see mine in this photo.

KJ5D0888-FrameShopBehind St. Louis looking back out.  You can really see the colors on the frozen minerals in the water from behind the falls looking back towards the sunlight.KJ5D0915-FrameShopBack of Kaskaskia FallsKJ5D0926-FrameShopFront of Kaskaskia falls.  Not all that tall, but very interesting.  Huge crack in the top of it already.KJ5D0932-FrameShopIce climbers all over Ottawa Falls.Photo Feb 28, 10 39 52 AM Photo Feb 28, 10 42 46 AMThe Ice climbers told us there were also climbers on the Tonty and LaSalle so we cut our hike short.  Plenty of good light left after a quick lunch we headed north to chase more Snowy Owls (Tomorrow Blog post)

Life is good and I am blessed!

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An Eagle a Day for February Day 28

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Feb 28: this concludes your eagle a day.  Hope you have enjoyed them,

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Thanks for stopping by, Life is good, and I am blessed!
Kent