Great Grey Owl Take-off

We spent nearly the entire day at Skansen in Stockholm. It's an outdoor nature park and Swedish historical village, to coin a cumbersome phrase. Numerous animals and birds are in mostly very large enclosures; it's wonderful to see them.

This is a male Great Grey Owl, sometime after he his regular feeding. He took a single dead mouse and then retired; his mate did not appear. After at least 15 minutes he approached again, hopping from perch to perch, when I got this shot--blind luck, with my good point-and-shoot. (In large he'll fly out of your screen :) The last time I saw great greys in the wild was in 2005 in Canada--the link is to a page on my website with other images from the trip (we saw literally 50 great greys).

Skansen, founded in 1891 is absolutely wonderful not only for the animals, but for the numerous buildings, including a full-scale 19th century small town. A must-see for any visitor to Stockholm.

Numerous animals recently had young, including sheep, reindeer, wild boar, brown bear, eagle owl--and elk (which they call moose--the calf was just four days old). Skansen is a full fledged zoo, and as such a major contributor to the restoration of animals to the wild in Sweden.