I saw my first great gray owl some time around 1987. It was love at first sight with the largest and most majestic of the owl species. I was living in northern Minnesota at the time, and though I didn’t know it then, I actually grew up in some of the best great gray owl habitat in the U.S.
This particular image was shot many years after seeing my first great gray. It was taken in 2005, a month or so after my National Geographic cover story about these owls. I heard there was an influx of great gray owls in the area where I grew up near Twig, Minnesota, so I drove back to my old stomping grounds and found this beautiful specimen in Sax-Zim Bog. Sax-Zim has become a noted bog reserve. You can help to make sure Sax-Zim is always a good home for great gray owls and other forest creatures of the north by donating to the Friends of Sax-Zim Bog.