January 1, 2023 - Snowy Owl of Cypress

I happened to be in Los Angeles for Christmas of 2022 and heard about this extremely rare Snowy Owl hanging out on the rooftops in a neighborhood in Cypress, California.

I saw some Snowy Owl images posted on Facebook so I reached out to fellow bird photographer and he was kind enough to give me the street names where the owl had been hanging out.

Initially I thought, why would I want to take a picture of an owl on top of a roof? But I'm really glad I went.

I called one my good friend Steve from Huntington Beach and we met on new year's day at Maple Grove Park. He jumped in my car, and we drove through the streets of the neighborhood searching the rooftops but couldn't see any owls. It was funny because we saw a lot of cars driving slowly down the streets as if they were looking at Christmas tree lights, but it was daytime. Lots of Subarus and SUVs driving slowly through the streets of this neighborhood.

I was starting to think that maybe we just missed the owl and that it had gone back to where it came from. I had to use the restroom so we went to the nearby Taco Bell then after that headed back toward the neighborhood and we went down a main street and all the sudden we saw a large group of photographers so we quickly pulled over and parked and got out of the car and headed over to the crowd.

And there it was sitting on top of the roof just hanging out. It was quite the scene with about 150+ people in total. Photographers with their large lenses and tripod's and birders and the snowy owl was the star of the show.

We stood there with everyone from about 3:30 to 5:15pm. Can you see the red mark on my nose where my camera was sitting the whole time? This would be a good time to have a tripod! 😊😂