Vince Flow of Kendall captured this closeup of a Snowy Owl in Kendall on Christmas. Three days later he took another picture of the majestic creature (below).

There have been numerous Snowy Owl sightings in Western New York in December, including several in Orleans County. The owls typically aren’t seen in the United States. Their presence this winter has a created a stir, especially among bird watchers.

Patty Longrod of Kendall took a picture of a Snowy Owl on West Kendall Road in early December. She said it was in a field owned by Kludt Brothers Farm.

“It was an amazing sight to see sitting out in the field and luckily I had my camera in my purse,” Longrod wrote in an email. “It flew off as I approached and I was amazed by how big it really was.”

Outside of Kendall, Deanna Baker took this one of a Snowy Owl in Lyndonville on Dec. 29. It’s on top of a telephone pole on Route 63 , near Rt. 18.

(If you get any good photos of a Snowy Owl, send it to us at news@orleanshub.com. Please note the day you took it and the location.)

Kelly Dudley of Barre took this photo of a Snowy Owl on Dec. 30 down the road from her house.

Local bird watchers have been in their glory the past month with Snowy Owl sightings all over Western New York, including in Orleans County.

The owl has a wingspan of five feet. It nests in the Arctic tundra and winters south through Canada. Usually there aren’t too many sightings in the United States, but there have been many so far this winter.

Someone also sent us a picture of the owl on top of a telephone pole on Route 63, near Route 18, just north of the village of Lyndonville.

(If you get any good photos of this owl, send them to us at news@orleanshub.com.)

Photo by Tom Rivers

GAINES – A field of hay bales are coated with snow on Route 279, just a little north of Route 104 late this afternoon.

Orleans Hub readers may recall a photo from about three months ago of the same field of hay bales.

I took this picture on Oct. 6, and it’s featured in the 2014 Orleans Hub calendar that’s available at the Lake Country Pennysaver, 170 North Main St. in Albion, as well as two other locations: Bindings Bookstore at 28 West Bank St., Albion and Della’s Chocolates at 512 North Main St., Medina.

Many Orleans Hub readers have posted photos from the storm on our Facebook page or emailed them directly to us.

I’ve picked some of my favorite submissions. Thank you for sending all of them, including those I didn’t include in this story.

Gary Tarr of Albion took this photo of a shopping cart coated in ice.

Jessica Harris of Albion took this picture in her back yard. “I opened my back window and snapped away.”

Kristina Martin of Holley captured an image of logs covered in snow and ice.

Rindie Kwiatkowski of Waterport sent in this photo of her son Brandon Blount and his dog Ellen. The tree split in pieces. “It sounded like a bomb going off when this one went,” she said.

Kwiatkowski said the ice-covered berries “was just the most beautiful thing I have ever seen ….. sad but pretty.” Her father, the late Don Cook, was a long-time local photographer who worked for years at the Medina Journal-Register.

Charity Garrow took this picture of a bent over tree on North Avenue in Medina.

Heather Beach Smith of Medina took this picture of the Erie Canal lift bridge on Route 63 in Medina.

Dawn Gardner of Kendall took this photo near the Pembroke exit of the Thruway.

Dena Bradshaw-Scribner took this one of Johnson Creek’s raging waters at the Lyndonville Dam. Many of the local creeks and streams threatened to flood after the storm.

Photos by Tom Rivers – Fog has descended on the Canal Basin in Medina, nearly obscuring the Glenwood Avenue canal bridge.

MEDINA – I drove from Medina to Albion at around 12:30 this afternoon and many prominent landmarks seemed to have vanished from the landscape.

Big grain facilities and barns are shrouded by the fog that has rolled in. Canal bridges are hard to see, including the Horan Road bridge in Medina.

The Canal Basin trees seem to pop out more with all the white in the sky.

The canal has been drained, and an unfortunate sight at the bottom is often orphaned bicycles and shopping carts.

Photos by Tom Rivers – This barn is on Sheeler Road out in the mucklands.

This barn is on Oak Orchard Road, not far from Route 98. The corn crop was recently harvested.

BARRE – Orleans Hub is going to have 2014 calendar available soon. We have all the pictures lined up and ready to go, but I thought we could improve one of the winters months.

So earlier today I set out on a mission: get a photo of a barn with some snow. I had a feeling something special was waiting for me in Barre. I headed out towards to the muck, taking Oak Orchard Road with a short detour on Angevine Road.

A barn and its neighbor have been fixtures along Angevine Road.

I took this looking through a culvert along Transit Road. There’s a barn in the background.

Barre is the most rural town in Orleans County. It includes muckland and many current and former dairy farms. Barre is a gold mine for rustic old barns. The town signs proclaims that Barre is “A Right To Farm Community.”

I think I got what we wanted for the calendar and I’m not revealing that image today. But I’ve included several others that have loomed large on the landscape for many years.

This barn is still standing on Oak Orchard Road close to the Angevine Road intersection.

These drainage pipes escort water off the muck and into a drainage ditch that runs along Transit Road. This was taken at the intersection with Sheelar Road.

A barn is the background and cattails are in the foreground in this photo taken from what appeared to be an unnamed dirt road off Transit Road.

Photos by Tom Rivers – Portage Road in Ridgeway is another winding road in the countryside.

The first big snowfall hit Tuesday evening and continued throughout the night. Orleans County residents woke up to 5 to 7 inches of snow on the ground.

I headed out for a drive this morning to get some photos.

The Beals Road canal bridge in Ridgeway was built in 1909. This one is in good shape. It had a major rehab in 2003.

A view from the Beals Road bridge, looking west at the Erie Canal.

These snow-covered apple trees are along Telegraph Road in Ridgeway.

This nice-looking old barn is not far from the apple orchard on Telegraph Road.

This Grand Army of the Republican marker notes the grave for a veteran of the Civil War. It is part of the Tanner Cemetery on Telegraph Road near Route 31.

The railroad crossing sign is hard to make out on Albion-Eagle Harbor Road in Albion.

CLARENDON – Orleans County is home to several waterfalls, but I think the one in Clarendon is the most visible.

This waterfalls is along Route 237, just a little south of the Route 31A intersection. I stopped by this morning at about 7:20 a.m. When I parked in a spot by a small park, I could hear the roar and splash of the 25-foot-high waterfalls.

This one isn’t as big or as majestic as the nearby waterfalls in Holley, but this is no weak trickle. Clarendon has long been proud of this site, which was next to a mill long ago. Some of the foundation from the mill remains in a hill by the waterfalls.

The waterfalls is fed from Sandy Creek. It is more powerful after a heavy rain.

Photo by Tom Rivers

GAINES – Two turkeys were roaming along West Bacon Road in Gaines this morning. Thanksgiving is now less than a week away.

Photos by Tom Rivers

It’s been a tranquil day of weather in Orleans County with temperatures at about 50 degrees. I didn’t bother with the winter coat.

The sky has been gray all day and there has been a little rain. I drove to Carlton and Kent earlier today and took the back roads on the drive home to Albion.

I stopped for a picture of the one-lane canal bridge on Keitel Road in Albion (top photo).

Just before that I passed by an orchard on Zig-Zag Road. It had been nearly picked clean of all its apples, but I noticed a few were still hanging on the trees. There is also some corn left to be harvested in the county.

The temperature is forecast to drop to the 30s on Saturday with Sunday at a high of only 25. I’ll have to get out the winter coat.

Photo by Tom Rivers

MEDINA – A cyclist passes by the Erie Canal in Medina’s canal basin. Main Street is a block away. A row of historic Medina sandstone buildings back up near the canal.

This photo was taken from the north side of the canal. The historic waterway officially closed for the season on Friday and will soon be drained for the winter.

The canal’s 190^th annual season kicks off in May.

Historic waterway ends 189^th year

Photos by Tom Rivers

The tenders, tugboats and barges are lining up today between the Main and Ingersoll Street lift bridges in Albion, where the vessels will spend the winter before the canal reopens next May.

The canal is closing at 5 p.m. today, ending its 189^th season since the waterway opened in 1825, transforming New York state into an economic powerhouse and giving birth to numerous canal towns, including Albion.

The 524-mile state canal system runs through Orleans County. I live a few blocks from the canal. I enjoy the old bridges and tugboats that are part of our landscape.

I took a lot of photos of the canal this year. I like this one of a sunset on Aug. 12 the best. It shows the Main Street lift bridge in Albion.

Nature trail at wildlife refuge leads to wonderland

Photos by Tom Rivers

ALABAMA – When we all woke up to a dusting of snow on Wednesday, the first snowfall in many months, I cancelled my morning plans and headed out to the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge.

I’ve been having an awakening of sorts in recent months to the natural wonders all around those of us who live in Orleans County. This place is stunning. My favorite time of the year may in the spring when the fruit trees are in their blossoming glory.

Nature reigns supreme on the 1.3 mile trail in the wildlife refuge.

This past summer was a joy with what felt like day after day of spectacular sunsets. They were orange, red, purple, and some had an array of colors. I have friends in the big cities and they hardly ever see a decent sunset.

Fast forward to Wednesday morning. I was going to Swallow Hollow, period. Everything else could wait about two hours.

I’ve been on this 1.3 mile loop through the woods a couple times before, both times with little kids so I couldn’t really take in nature’s glory. I couldn’t let my guard down. I had to stay vigilant in case a child fell in the swamp.

So Wednesday, after the first light snowfall of the season, I embarked on a nature hike all by myself. Swallow Hollow is part of a wildlife refuge that covers about 11,000 acres in Shelby in Orleans County and Alabama in Genesee County.

Swallow Hollow is on Knowlesville Road, east of Route 63. I hoped Swallow Hollow was in Orleans County so we could claim this as one of our assets. But I think it’s slightly to the south in Genesee County. Close enough. We have about half the refuge in our county so why quibble over a technicality?

Swallow Hollow has an elevated boardwalk over the swamp. It makes for a wild walk. I give the refuge and whoever made this happen a lot of credit. I’m sure there were some naysayers when the idea was put out there: Let’s put a boardwalk in the swamp.

I’m grateful the project became a reality and we have public access to such a special place. Swallow Hollow was closed to the public for five years until the boardwalk was upgraded for about $500,000 in 2006. This was met with great fanfare by the public when the trail reopened.

You’re on the boardwalk at the beginning and the end of the trail. You spend most of your time walking on a dirt trail. (It was covered in snow on Wednesday.)

The birds are happy in the refuge. They sound like an enormous joyful chorus.

It was a chilly morning Wednesday and the autofocus didn’t work on my camera. I had to use the manual focus and a lot of photos that I thought were winners were actually slightly fuzzy. But it’s hard to walk out of Swallow Hollow without some good ones.

Photo by Tom Rivers

ALBION – I took this picture of a bunch of Canada geese in a field along Albion-Eagle Harbor Road this morning.

These birds are awfully skittish. I don’t understand why. They outnumbered me about 1,000 to 1. I tried to get close and they took off in a flock. The little black marks in the sky are all geese.