It feels very much like late fall right now. Constant drizzle, and a cold steady wind that says "Winter is right behind". In fact when the clouds clear away from the top of King George you can see some snow has fallen up there. I was in need of a smile just now, and one was delivered.
Leah needed a ride to the table sale at the gym, and we had just left the House and were heading down the hill when I saw a white bird flying across the road below. I watched it for a while when I realized that it wasn't a gull, and by this time it had put some distance between us. As I pointed it out to Leah I reached for my binoculars which are right on the seat beside me. Normally they're right on the seat beside me, they weren't there. I had brought them into the House yesterday.
My first thought was that it was a Gyrfalcon, but a recent sighting of a Snow Owl in Victor Bay ("Oh, I was supposed to tell you yesterday, there was an Opikjuaq <Snowy Owl> at Victor Bay") made me unsure. I was certain it wasn't a Ptarmigan or Northern Fulmar. I quickly turned around in the middle of the road and with Leah watching the bird I ran in to grab the binoculars.
When I came back out Leah was standing up in the passenger door looking at the bird. She was trying to point the bird out to me, but I was having no luck finding it. She was loudly proclaiming "it's right there!" until she said it flew out of sight over the hills.
When I looked up, one of the carpenters from the site next door had run out and was now standing in the middle of the intersection, trying to see what ever it was we were looking at. "What did you see? What was it?" he asked. "A bird" I said. "Oh" and he turned and went back to the house he was working on.