Bespoke Database.

Saturday afternoon found me "back to owling", it was a late start though as in the morning I was sat in front of the PC for a few hours playing around with a new data base that has been created for me especially for my owl records.

Imputing data couldn't be easier now, it takes a fraction of the time and the data only has to be inputted once, everything is then automatically sorted in to the relevant sections. By simply selecting one of the six tabs at the bottom all the info I want is there, specific site data, nest box info, breeding history, monthly sitings etc. No more manual counting of how many sightings I have made, it does everything automatically...........it is just brilliant!

This is a screen shot of what one of the pages looks like.

Many many thanks to Chris & Jack for creating it for me, it's just fantastic.

Anyway, I did eventually get out on Saturday afternoon, I revisited my most recently found site No 131 to try and get some daytime images. Sadly after a 2 hour wait they hadn't shown so I moved down the lane to site No 124.

Here both adult birds were located in and around the nest tree but they weren't showing too well as they were sheltering from the driving wind and rain. I waited patiently and eventually in between the showers the sun came out and a few images were obtained, my first of the adults from this site.

Site No 124 at Peating Magna  

On my way back I stopped off again at site No 131, this time the owls were out and did show very briefly, sadly though no images were possible. I won't be giving up just yet and will be returning soon.......

Hung over owling.....AGAIN!!!!

Same old story, Saturday morning and completely hung over from the alcohol abuse the night before! Not to worry, I had other plans today, making more Little Owl boxes. Come 4.0pm I'd put together 7 boxes and painted 3 of them, its was real slog and very slow going but the hangover was abating and I was starting to liven up, the sun was out, albeit spasmodically so it was time to get out there! 

This evenings expedition took me over to Willoughby to check on a few of the local sites, nothing to be seen or heard at sites 31, 22,21, 20, 60 or 45. Whats going on? To visit so many sites in succession and see nothing is quite unusual, was it something to do with my blurry vision and that I had still got my beer goggles on!!!

Anyway site No 103 came to the rescue, 2 juveniles were easy to locate as they were making a right racket with their continuous alarm calls from within the depths of an Ash tree, I never did see the birds but I did see the local moggy sneaking around underneath, obviously the reason for the owls distress.

From site 103 I decided to make my way home in the opposite direction to normal, this took me down a very narrow, muddy farm lane that only ever sees the occasional bit of farm traffic. It was very quiet, spooky quiet really, and then it happened, I was passing a farm gate that lead into an open pasture area when I spotted two Little Owls sitting on a fence post....what luck!!!!

Another new site (No 124) and again without even trying! I sat and watched them for 5 minutes or so when one of them took flight and came towards me.

The flighty owl came and landed on a fence post not 10 metres from where I was parked up. As I had my camo screen up at the Landrover window he couldn't see me......but he could hear me!  The deafening sound of the camera shutter completely killed the tranquil silence and scared him off, but not before I took advantage of the situation and rattled off some images.