snow and owls and do cameras bounce

I had a few thoughts at lunch time when the snow was falling rather heavily -- 1) there would not be many people at the owls due to the weather and 2) I might get something different from the norm 3) the owls would be flying early as the ground was snow covered making voles harder to find- 4) then there was option two stay in the warm and do some work -- what I did not factor in was the fact that the owls might just not like snow, it might be so heavy that I just could not see more than 50m and then if the owls were on the wing the AF would manage to focus on a few 1cm diameter snow flakes but miss a 80cm wide owl behind it! --- well it was fun until I when headlong on the road camera and all -- amazingly it all still seems to work fine