It's not too often that my sightings of owls goes into double figures in a day. In fact, I think my last '10 owl day' had been in July 2015 when Canadian friends, David and Miriam, were with me, and since then things had gone downhill somewhat.
On Thursday 11th February, I was all set for an afternoon out with John. It was my turn to drive, and on the way to pick up John I called at my 'old faithful' site, No.02. Sure enough, there was a Little Owl on the chimney stack. I didn't bother with any photos, but I now wish I had.
Having picked up John, we headed out on our 'standard owling route'. Our first sighting was at LO Site No.44 where we'd not seen a bird since 5th November. This was good news! The bird was into the light, but a record shot had to be taken.
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| Little Owl (Athene noctua) - my Site No.44 |
Our next sighting was at our usual lunch stop. Here sightings, only of single birds, had been somewhat sporadic of late. We were, therefore, delighted to find a pair of birds sitting side-by-side in the nest opening!
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| Little Owls (Athene noctua) - my Site No.34 |
No owls were seen at the other sites local to Site No.34, so we moved on to Site No.42. Here an owl was in the nest tree, near to the nest opening, rather than showing on the barn that it usually frequents.
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| Little Owl (Athene noctua) - my Site No.42 |
At this point we decided to head back towards home, with the goal of a visit to Longmoor Lake to try and hook up with the Hen Harrier that is there. We re-traced our steps, picking up additional Little Owls at my Sites Nos.51 and 23. I'm regretting the lack of photos there too!
I was feeling quite pleased at having seen 7 owls already that day, as it has been a while since I'd achieved that number. Whilst the Hen Harrier didn't perform for us at Longmoor Lake, the Barn Owls did! Both of them emerged at around 14h00. They didn't come very close, but I did manage some images.
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| Barn Owl (Tyto alba) - Longmoor Lake |
I arrived on site to see the back end of the owl disappearing into the distance. I waited, in the hope of getting a photo, and it was starting to get dark before the owl appeared again and immediately settled on a post at the opposite side of the plantation from my position.
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| Short-eared Owl (Asio Flammeus) - undisclosed site |
I waited for another 20 minutes and it didn't move. By now it was getting quite dark, and I set off along the road until I got to a position only around 60 metres from the owl. I had some difficulty in the low light finding it in my viewfinder, but I could see from my images that it'd found me!
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| Short-eared Owl (Asio Flammeus) - undisclosed site |
Thus ended a very satisfying day, even if the photography left a lot to be desired!
Incidentally that 'four species day' in January 2010 was before I kept records but, from memory it was Short-eared Owl (1) and Long-eared Owl (3) at Rutland Water, followed by Short-eared Owl (3?), Barn Owl (2?), and Little Owl (1) at Cossington Meadows - so possibly a 10 owl day then too.
I'm not sure when my next post will be, or what the subject matter will be.
Thank you for dropping by.
