120 & 77.

My very late search for more juveniles proved fruitful today, another 5 located across 2 sites today takes the 2010 total to an incredible 77. But the good news doesn't finish there, there was also an added bonus of another two brand new Little Owl sites taking the overall tally to 120 in just 2 years..........a mere 100 more sites than my original target of 20 in 3 years!!!!!!

The first new site (No 119) was just outside the village of Kilby, a very vocal bird but I wasn't able to locate its exact location for the purpose of a photo due to the heavy foliage it was hiding in, I will return!

The second new site of the day (No 120) was just outside the village of Slawston, after a long wait the potential site produced the goods when 2 juveniles showed, unfortunately one of them was very camera shy, nevertheless its sibling made up for that and showed really well in a variety of poses and locations.

A very showy bird at what I think must be the nest entrance.

It went up high in the tree but still kept its eye on me.

After a while it's confidence grew and it came down to feed from the fence posts.

Bloody hell then it landed right in front of me, I had to zoom out otherwise I wouldn't of been able to fit it into the view finder. The light wasn't good (sun from behind the subject) but it wasn't difficult to capture the birds detail when your taking an image from about 6 feet!!

On the way home I made a detour to site No 9 at Welham, this was my first check for juveniles at this site this year, luckily I knew where to look and as it happens it wasn't too late............3 were located on a distant wall. My patience paid off when one of them came over to check me out, as you can perhaps gather from the image it was very vocal and not best pleased of my presence...... I was glad of his though! 

The 2010 tally keeps ticking over, that's now 77 juveniles across 36 sites.