Snowy Freedom

Some waited for dusk. I waited for magic.

Exiting Union Station, the cold hit me like a juggernaut. Outside the door, a crowd of thirty photographers and fifty birders stood intently looking at the exact same spot. The electrifying news of a visit from a Snowy Owl had bounced through internet birding forums for the last several days.

And so we waited. Shivering. Checking and rechecking focus and exposure. Stomping feet. Sharing intel. And we waited some more.

As the night grew darker, and very, very, much colder, the crowd thinned.

Then a shout, “Look, there it is!”

Swooping as a white beacon of joy out of the dark, she dipped over the top of Union Station. Silently flaring to a stop atop a monument, she was unmistakable.?

There was a moment of silent reverence among those of us left to bear witness. Then the shutters clicked.

After about twenty minutes the Snowy dipped below the monument to catch dinner. Likely a rat as they were all about. With her dinner in her talons she flew out over rush hour and vanished in the darkness.

The magic is real.

Snowy Freedom

A Snowy Owl on the top of the Christopher Columbus Memorial Fountain at Union Station in Washington, DC.

?Geoffrey S. Baker | All Rights Reserved

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