After spending most of my free time during the winter months making and erecting Barn Owl boxes and barrels I had a very welcome and overdue "owling" session last night. Although very windy (not usually conductive for finding owls) it was however very bright during the last 2 hours before sunset.
Because time was limited I edged my bets and visited a location where I had previously seen Barn Owls in similar conditions. Once there I slowly drove around the rough grassy area hoping to chance a hunting Barn Owl, this wasn't to be the case but instead I spotted a Little Owl flying across the field and up into a tree, I was compulsed to investigate further.
I slowly drove around to where I thought it had landed only to find a very nice looking cavity about 10 feet up, but no owl! I positioned the car in an advantageous position and waited........ After a wait of around 10 minutes the owl appeared at the cavity, this offered a great photo opportunity.
It sat at the cavity for a while scanning around making sure the coast was clear before it re-emerged. Luckily right next to the tree is a sheep pen which offered a variety of different perches for it to use.
After a while the owl flew and landed on top of the Hawthorne hedge, seconds later it was joined by a second owl, not sure where this bird had been hiding?
As the sun set both owls seemed to gain more confidence and moved around from perch to perch, one of them even dropped down into the tussocky grass right in front of the car!
Eventually I was beaten by the light and reluctantly departed, whilst driving back up the field another larger bird (presumably an owl?) was seen flying across my path and up into a tree. As I slowly approached I could see it was a Tawny Owl!!!
It sat perched high up in the tree and didn't batter an eyelid at my presence! I slowly got got out of the car and pointed the camera up at it. It was almost dark, 8:44pm, at an ISO of 2000 I could only muster a shutter speed of 1/30 of a second whilst hand holding the camera (sorry for boring those who don't know photography settings). I wasn't very hopeful of attaining a photo that was going to be usable but among the rubbish I did have this one "usable" image.
It was a very enjoyable couple of hours with the owls, two new sites that I will surely be visiting again soon...........
Thanks for stopping by, hopefully another post soon! In the meantime if you would like to keep tabs with my day to day activity with the owls I am now posting on twitter, @PMRiddle
Cheers!!
