View allAll Photos Tagged grayghost
Whitewater Draw, Arizona
A male northern harrier scans the ground for prey at Whitewater Draw in southern Arizona.
Northern harrier at Roosevelt Wetlands, Pinellas County, FL. Check out my blog at dinascitywildlife.com/
A male northern harrier, or gray ghost makes a close flyby in some perfect evening light. I see lots of male northern harriers, but they are most often skittish. It was an incredible experience to find one in Pt. Reyes that was totally indifferent to people. He often flew only 15ft away from me during his daily hunting routine.\
KCS 2016, a relatively rare "Grey Ghost" GP38-2, has taken up residence at Bensenville Yard and has been assigned to the I47 switch job, serving local industries in the Schaumburg area on T-Th and the Mars / Newlyweds plants on the Elgin / C&M Subs, respectively, on M-W-F.
Here, Wednesday's job heads east to switch out Mars, passing underneath the water tower in Elmwood Park, IL in the process.
As a pleasant surprise this morning on 248 was KCSM 4570, still in the former TFM gray scheme, nicknamed "Gray Ghost" by many railfans. Here they are as they finish their work at Cottage Grove and pass over Jamaica Ave with a large cut of autoracks
KCSM 4548, a "Grey Ghost" AC4400CW, leads CPKC 180 past the Schaumburg, IL Metra station during the waning moments of the blue hour.
KCSM 4542 ("Grey Ghost" AC4400CW) trundles toward Tower B-17 in Bensenville, IL with CPKC 248 in tow, while an American Airlines flight departs O'Hare International Airport overhead.
Earlier today, CPKC 181 brought in a rare visitor to Bensenville Yard - KCS 2016, a GP38-2 still painted in Kansas City Southern "Grey Ghost" colors. There can only be a handful of these left!
Later, word got out that the unit was assigned to local job I47, which switches industries in the Schaumburg area on Tuesdays and Thursdays, while it works the Mars and Newlyweds plants on the Elgin / C&M Subs, respectively, on M-W-F.
I decided to spend a couple hours at Tower B-17 hoping to see the unit perform its first duties on this assignment, and sure enough, they came out of the yard with only a caboose, planning to shove back in on another track to retrieve their train. Unfortunately, in the midst of dodging raindrops I forgot to reset my shutter speed so I got a slightly blurred image of the unit shoving back in, but still not a bad way to cap off the night.
KCSM 4551 (AC4400CW) leads a CPKC 541 empty ethanol train solo through downtown Roselle, IL during the waning moments of the blue hour.
Northern Harrier male who was sitting confidently on his favorite perch. Turns out favorite perch is just on the side of the trail, near the start of the trail, and I was dying to take a walk, so eventually I did walk past where he was ("on the far side of the trail" but it wasn't a wide trail) and he did take off, disgruntledly. He posed very well on his perch but in this direction, he was backlit, so I only ended up keeping one of the perching photos from this vantage. In that photo he was already starting to fluff his wings a bit, as he could tell I was coming close. ... Aha! Per Cornell, “Either the male or the female chooses the nest site, which is on the ground and usually in a dense clump of vegetation such as willows, grasses, sedges, reeds, bulrushes, and cattails.” He must be guarding a nest site. There was a female spending a lot of time near there as well.
Prairie Creek Redwood State Park, California. The Gray Ghost is the perfect nickname for this huge owl, This photo was taken in very low light as it entered its realm, one that does not include us photo hungry humans! Not as nice as some of the photos of this bird making their way onto Flickr, but lighting was poor, fog was dense and it was all I could get. The last I had seen was in 1981, of the recently described endemic Sierra Great Gray Owl (Sttrix nebulosa yosemitensis). If interested in reading the paper that describes this new subspecies: www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/vgl/wildlife/pdfs/GGOW-NewSubspp_H...
KCSM 4535 (AC4400CW) leads a loaded sand train (CPKC 640) through Northbrook, IL, seen here diverging onto the connection to the UP at Shermer.
Gray ghost surprise!!
It's always good to wash your fruit in the morning. You may ask...."But why?".....The answer...because it means you're facing your big sliding glass doors and might spot something wonderful out in the open space behind your house. That's exactly what happened. I saw a hawk come swooping in and land right behind my fence. I assumed it was our resident red-tailed hawk.....but when I went over to look...it was flying away from me and I could see it had a white patch on top of it's tail which could only mean a Northern Harrier. However, what I didn't expect was that it was a MALE harrier or as many call it a Grey ghost!!! We have never seen a male harrier hunting behind our house. I made some inaudible sounds with my excitement.....grabbed my camera and bolted out of the back door. I really didn't expect it to hang around very long, and it didn't. It flew out of sight, but then back in sight, and then repeated this numerous times. Finally he started making some circles and made a few passes right in front of me. He also managed to fly with some very nice fall colors behind him in the distance. I will have a few more to share, but here are some of my favorites.
Nikon Z9 with Nikkor 180-600mm F5.6-6.3 lens at 600mm, 1/1600sec, F8, various ISO's from 360 to 720, handheld and cropped. (Please view images large for best details) Nov 16 2024 Northern Colorado
Gray ghost surprise!!
It's always good to wash your fruit in the morning. You may ask...."But why?".....The answer...because it means you're facing your big sliding glass doors and might spot something wonderful out in the open space behind your house. That's exactly what happened. I saw a hawk come swooping in and land right behind my fence. I assumed it was our resident red-tailed hawk.....but when I went over to look...it was flying away from me and I could see it had a white patch on top of it's tail which could only mean a Northern Harrier. However, what I didn't expect was that it was a MALE harrier or as many call it a Grey ghost!!! We have never seen a male harrier hunting behind our house. I made some inaudible sounds with my excitement.....grabbed my camera and bolted out of the back door. I really didn't expect it to hang around very long, and it didn't. It flew out of sight, but then back in sight, and then repeated this numerous times. Finally he started making some circles and made a few passes right in front of me. He also managed to fly with some very nice fall colors behind him in the distance. I will have a few more to share, but here are some of my favorites.
Nikon Z9 with Nikkor 180-600mm F5.6-6.3 lens at 600mm, 1/1600sec, F8, various ISO's from 360 to 720, handheld and cropped. (Please view images large for best details) Nov 16 2024 Northern Colorado
Happy 4th Birthday Ando & Jack!!
Last summer the brothers got together for the first time since they were pups, I truly wished they lived next door, it would be such a blast!