owls about that then!: Tempted Back!

Hi and welcome to my Blog, my name is Paul Riddle and I live in south Leicestershire, UK. As far back as I can recall I have had an interest in wildlife and in particular birds, especially owls and raptors. In August 2008 I began my quest to locate as many Little Owl territories as possible local to where I live. The driving force was a reported decline in the uk numbers so I thought I would do my bit and conduct a study in my area. The majority of my allotted time so far has been dedicated to reach a target of a 100 sites, once achieved the searching will slow down and a more comprehensive monitoring and nest box programme will commence. Please pop back occasionally and catch up with the life and times of my owls, I hope you enjoy your visit!!!

UPDATE.....2011 will see my Little Owl study continue to gather momentum and on into its 3rd year, hopefully I will be able to reach my new target of locating 200 Little Owl sites. In addition to that I will also be monitoring the local Barn Owls too. From my observations they appear to be fairing worse than the Little Owls and their population in South Leicestershire is very sparse indeed. I will be implementing a similar nest box type programme and hopefully in time the numbers will increase.....

UPDATE.....2012 will see my nest box project gathering more momentum, but now I am concentrating mainly on Barn Owls. Their numbers are sparse here in south Leicestershire with only 3 or 4 known pairs! Currently I have made and erected 37 boxes with the kind help of "my team". But it is not enough, so my plan is to keep building and erecting new boxes as I want to create a corridor of boxes that will encompass each know breeding territory. They will all be located in suitable habitat then when the 2012 juveniles disperse they will hopefully not need to move too far before they settle down and establish their own "local" territory.

The Little Owls are doing just fine, my 3 year quest came to an end in Aug 2011, during this time I managed to record birds at 197 different Leicestershire locations (+ 5 out of the county), successful breeding was recorded at 114 of these sites . Currently we have made and erected 42 boxes, of which 7 were used in 2011, the plan for 2012 is to get this number up to 50 but with a different design to see if more occupancy can be achieved.

Tuesday, 6 December 2011

Tempted Back!

Recently I said that I was going to get back to concentrating on my Little Owls after spending far too much time with the Short Eared Owls..........well I lied!!!!! I Just couldn't resist another visit and finally I was blessed with great views and glorious golden light.

In total I managed 225 images, I'm still working my way through processing them all but below are a few that I've done so far, oh and the new header. I think they have come out pretty well and I'm really pleased with the outcome.

Hope you agree?

All that is needed now to get some really pin sharpe images is a new Canon 500mm F4 lens to replace my old Sigma, so if anyone out there would like to donate one........I'm ya man!!!!!!!

3 comments:

Mike Randall Bird Photography said...: Very special images Paul.
The Canon lens is on my wish list to!; 6 December 2011 19:57
Christian said...: These are absolutely great Paul, I absolutely LOVE the first one, the bird in that stunning hunting pose. Brilliant and I'm looking forward to the rest of your shoot.; 6 December 2011 22:26
Phil Brown said...: Fabulous images Paul, I can almost watch it fall onto it's prey in the 1st shot! I'd love to help you with a donation of a 500 f4 but I think I'll hang onto it for a bit longer...:) It certainly is a fabulous lens (to much $$) but a fabulous lens.; 7 December 2011 11:57