Each winter, a very special sort of tourist shows up in OBX of North Carolina, the Snowy Owl!

I’d seen reports two weeks ago that the bird was back in the Nags Head & Ocracoke areas so I hit the road to see if I could find this shy high Arctic visitor.
On our first trip I spent 4 days looking but came up empty.
I’ve had this bird on my target list for years but never seem to be in the right place at the right time to see it.
Once again I’d come up a day late and a dollar short on the Snowy Owl hunt.
Sigh…

Disappointed (but not unhappy because birding in the OBX during the winter is awesome owl or no owl haha!) I figured that I’d try again to find it whenever it popped up again in NC.
I kinda assumed that would be next year but as it turned out, I didn’t have to wait that long!
In fact, I was only home for about 24 hours when another alert was shared that the owl had been spotted near Pea Island again.
So, I repacked the bags (which had just been unpacked, lol!) and headed straight back out to Nags Head to try once more.
Day after day, I searched but with no luck.
Until the very last hour before heading home that is…

Finally, after a couple hundred miles of driving over two weeks, dozens of miles on foot hiking on sand, through snow, rain, wind and biting cold temperatures, my persistence paid off as my sweeping searching of the dune trail south off of Ramp 4 at Oregon Inlet yielded our first look at this elusive owl.

It was a real rush to be able to snap off a few photos of a bird I’ve been hoping to see for years. Although the encounter was brief, I’ll never forget twisting the barrel of my lens to zoom in on the birds white head poking up from behind a tuft of grass. That moment of realization that the search was over once the owls head was in focus was exhilarating.
It was also a tremendous relief to be able to exclaim out loud “I got it”!
Woohooo!

Special thanks to @apexbirdluver for the heads up 😉

Photos by @sally_siko of @birdwatching_nc on my beloved 50MP beast, the @canonusa #5Ds