Like a lot of people, I love owls, but finding and photographing them can be quite challenging! Seeing a Grey Grey Owl in nature is something I’ve wanted to do for more than 20 years, but there is just no chance of that happening where I live in NE Ohio. I’ve known for a while that my best chance of seeing one of these mysterious and elusive owls was in northern Minnesota…and more specifically, the Sax-Zim Bog area. This is an area about an hour northwest of Duluth and about 14.5 hours drive from me. In January 2025 I finally made the trip! I could have saved some time and flown, but I prefer to drive because it just seems more adventurous and you never know what you could find along the way. The logistics seem easier and less chances of things going wrong, like canceled flights and messed up rental cars.

This was a particularly good year to look for owls because it is an irruption year for boreal species, like the Great Grey and the little Boreal Owl. This means that for various reasons, like food and climate, many more of these owls have migrated to the southern range of the boreal forest for the winter. I had hoped to see and photograph a Great Grey Owl when I started to plan this trip in early December, but it was luck that this turned out to be such a rare time to also see the cute boreal owls!

Of course, there were also lots of other interesting birds and wildlife in the bog and I only wish I could have had more time to see them. Some other wildlife I saw were snowshoe hares, mink, red fox, red squirrels, redpolls, ruffed grouse, Canada jays, northern shrike, purple finch, goldfinch, and a barred owl. If you would like to visit Sax-Zim, check out the Friends of Sax-Zim Bog’s website for a ton of valuable information.

All of the wildlife was photographed with an Olympus OM-1 + 300mm F4 Pro with a 1.4x teleconverter attached some of the time.