Back with the Long Eared Owls
It’s been 6 weeks (at the time of filming and photographing) since I photographed the young long eared owls. On my first visit, we had some amazing encounters with two of this year’s owlets, but unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the adults. Hopefully that will change as I am back out with Ollie and Jordey for round two with the owls.
After meeting up with Ollie and Jordey at the parking spot, we got our gear and headed out to try and find the owls. Though we did see a couple of other photographers also heading off to find the owls, it was much quieter today, than when we visited last.
We did a lot of wandering, listening and looking for the owls, the chicks we had seen last were now pretty much fully grown (Ollie and Jordey have both been out loads to this site to capture images of them growing up), and so they were no longer calling for food from Mum and Dad. This made our search a little bit harder.
We did eventually manage to find one of the adults in a tree, right next to one of the footpaths (I spotted some photographers on the track above us, so we knew we were in the right spot). We slowly worked our way around to get into position and take some images. The first couple I took had a pesky stick in the way of the owl, so knowing I had a couple images, I moved over a bit to get a clearer view of the owl and got another photo, which I LOVE.
Unfortunately, our time with this owl was short, as a dog walker went past on a footpath behind where the owl was sitting, so it moved on to another part of the woodland.
We headed off slowly, to see if we would be able to see one of the other owls that live in these woodlands. With Ollie’s thermal scope, not long after that first owl had moved off, we spotted another owl. This one was one of this year’s juveniles out hunting for itself. I got into position and started taking my images. Again, this was only a short encounter, as the owl set off hunting, leaping from its perch. I managed to get a couple of images, before it flew off into the trees.
We continued out walk around area where the owls are known to hunt and had another brief encounter with one of them hunting.
After this it was more than an hour of searching with no more owl encounters. We did spot some Roe Deer, far off in the grass which was lovely to see (my first proper roe deer sighting). As we had had no luck in the woods, we headed out to one of the more open areas where the guys had some amazing encounters with the owls hunting and sitting along the fence line in their previous visits.
Once we got to this spot, straight away we could see an owl, right down the far end of the field. As the light was starting to get low, I set my camera up on my tripod so I would be able to use a lower shutter speed and thus have a lower ISO (it was still really high).
The owl eventually, started to fly around this field, and perched much closer to us, down the opposite fence line and I managed to get one image before it flew off back hunting down the field. So, it was then back to waiting for it to head our way again.
Eventually it flew back and perched along the wall, and I was able to get a couple of images of it here, before it then moved behind us. Unfortunately, it wasn’t there long for me to get a better composition as it made its way further out into the fields.
After a while, with the light dropping faster and faster, we decide to head back towards the car as we had seen one of the owls head that way. So, we picked up all our gear in the hopes that we’d run into the owl on route to the cars.
We did spot a few times, with the first having the owl perched far off on an old tree with a sea of pink flowers in front. Unfortunately, the composting for this wasn’t ideal, with the tree truck directly behind the owl, helping the two blend together. Luckily though, the owl moved on and I managed to get a couple of images of it, sitting on a low branch of a fir tree. The light was really low now, but thankfully the owl wasn’t moving much and there was no wind, so I was able to get a sharp image at 1/50s at 600mm while the camera was on the tripod.
After this, we left the owl in piece and headed back to the cars (it was now about 10 pm!). It was great to be able to get back out to see the long eared owls and I am really happy with my images. I would have liked some more time with the owls along the walls in the field, but it was not meant to be … this year. Hopefully, I can visit again next year and create some more memories of these special birds.
Check out Ollie and Jordy on Instagram:
Ollie: https://www.instagram.com/ocphoto2024/
Jordy: https://www.instagram.com/lake_side_photography_