An old friend.....

During the last few years I have been very lucky with my quest to find Little Owls, although my desire to find more new sites has now dwindled somewhat. It use to be the case that every spare minute I had would be spent out in the field searching for more and more new sites! Nowadays I am quite content whilst out to just stop off at some of my known sites and reacquaint myself with the resident owls. One such location is my site No 62 not far from the village of Leire, the owls here use to be quite easy to see without the need to even get out of my car. However, during the last year I haven't seen them at all which lead me to believe that they had vacated the site?

Even though I haven't seen them for ages I still pull over for a few minutes when passing by, just in case they were still there? Well it just goes to show that persistence does pay off because on my last stop off I made a sighting of one of the owls. It was only a brief sighting as it stared back at me from one of the favoured perches in its patch, but it was long enough for me to capture an image.

Considering the poor light conditions I am pleased with the outcome of the image, the owl is holding a nice erect pose and the defused and uncluttered background gives a slightly 3D effect. I wouldn't be surprised if this image finds its way into my 2014 owl calendar.