I had an unexpected bonus bird this morning.  A friend has been telling me for several weeks that he has a Great Horned owl perched behind his house on many days but we didn't connect until this morning.  This morning at coffee he told me the bird was back so I retrieved my camera from the house, picked up my friend at coffee and drove to his house. 

When we arrived I had difficulty spotting the owl from his deck because it was so well camouflaged.  I doubt I ever would have seen the bird if I hadn't been told that it was in view.  I took about  fifteen photos in all, but was somewhat stymied in that the birds face was hidden by a single, very small fir twig that hung down and obscured either the middle of its face or one of its eyes.  After taking an initial group of photos at about 1/125 of a second I upped my ISO from 200 to 800 and obtained much better results, although after I adjusted the first group of photos using Adobe Lightroom I couldn't tell much difference. 

After just a few minutes the neighborhood's lawn crew arrived with a very loud riding mower and after a little of that disruption the owl decided it had had enough and flew down the hill into denser forest.  I managed to get a quick photo just before it launched itself, but its head is slightly blurred. 

However I think that you can appreciate what a magnificent bird this is from the photos.