Today my sister and I met a truck driver friend at the rest area near Opportunity, MT to show him around the Deer Lodge Valley. We were sure, just sure, that we’d be able to find some good raptors along the East River Road in the Deer Lodge Valley, or bighorn sheep in the valley west of Anaconda, or great gray owls at Georgetown Lake. We got skunked all around and soon our friend’s free time was expired. We returned him to his truck, but we weren’t quite ready to call it a day just yet. So, we headed west again. We saw distant bighorn sheep, then, at Georgetown Lake, our luck REALLY turned around, when we came upon a most cooperative great gray owl.
When I first spotted him, he was at the top of a tree about 35-40 yards away from the road. We did not leave the road both not to trespass on private property and not to trespass on the owl’s personal space and send him flying.
After some time, he flew to a tree closer to the road, and there he stayed until our fingers and toes were numb.
It was a clear, bright, cold day and the wind was blowing. If you are familiar with the area, you just said “no surprise, that!”
On the way home, we found a small herd of bighorn sheep 20 yards off a road, in the front yard of a home in the Anaconda West Valley.
If only we had been able to share those sights with our friend!
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