I took my sister to see her first UK owl

I love owls and so far this year I have not had a chance to photograph them, time to rectify that as I take some time out of a family holiday to attempt to photography them…

We are in Somerset, staying on a farm for the week, naturally, I brought all my gear with me in the hopes of getting some wildlife photography in! On the second night, I went out on a bit of a scout along the drive way with my new to me thermal scope (thank you Dad 😊). Straight away, I was within meters of my first owl!

This was a good start, so the following evening I set out in the hopes of photographing them. I set up under a tree and waited, and waited, and waited some more. I could hear the calls of some young tawny owls, so I knew they were around but my thermal scope wasn’t able to penetrate though the wall of leaves from the woodland the calls were coming from.

After a good wait, I decided to wonder down the driveway to see if there was anything about down there. At the bridge I spotted a thrush and managed to get some photos of it thanks to my monopod and my new Leofoto PG-2S. The image was taken at 1/60s – something that is impossible handheld.

There wasn’t much other than the thrush around, so I headed back towards the house as it was now getting too dark for any images. On the way back, literally where I had been earlier, was an owl perched on the fence! I wasn’t fast enough setting up monopod so missed this opportunity at photographing, but this was amazing to see and filled me with hope of success the following evening.

I went out in my 3D camo, and set up my camera on the tripod next to the end of the hedge, so I could tuck myself in and hopefully get a good view of the owl if is perched on the fence again. It was a long wait, and the owlets didn’t start calling until after 9:30 pm. A little after 10pm, I saw a shape off on a distant fence post, and it turned out to be an adult Tawny owl! This was so exciting to see, not only had a I not seen one in the wild before, I had found it myself. The light was dropping very fast now, even if it was coming up to the longest day of the year – this is for sure where I would love to have a 600mm f4 lens! I managed to get some images in APS-C mode, and had to use lightrooms de-noise feature to make them somewhat presentable. I had this set around 20, as I don’t want to overdo it and make the image look soft and fake. With this first recorded encounter over, I was excited to get back the following day.

This time my older sister, Becky, came along with me, having lived in Australia for over 10 years, she had never seen a UK owl before so was keen to try her luck with me. I had given her my usual camo jacket to wear so we could blend in as much as we could. We decided to head to the other side of the field where I saw the owl to the night before, in the hopes that it used that fence post as a perch often, this vantage point was much closer and had the benefit of being slightly downhill, so the tall grasses were not getting in the way.

We waited here, with binoculars and my thermal to hand, scanning the edge of the woodland in the hopes of seeing something. While we waited for the owls, I spotted a female Roe deer off in a different field, some way off. I was able to get some footage of her with the camera at 600mm, plus x1.5 aps-c mode and another plus 1.5 x zoom thanks so Sony’s clear image zoom feature.

Just before 10pm, not one but two tawny owls came out of the woods, and landed on the fence up where I had been the night before 🤦‍♀️ typical! But realistically, if we’d been there we know that they wouldn’t have come out at all. This was great to see and I did my best to get some footage of them, but as with the night before, they were just too far away for anything remotely decent. It was great to have had at least a partial success with the owls, as Becky got to see them, and we were treated to a third owl flying over them and down the driveway! On looking back though the footage, I did spot Becky accidentally stopping my camera recording 😅 I think she was trying to get the LCD to turn on, as it was so dark.

High on our success from the previous night, Becky and I headed out for another attempt at seeing the owls. This time we stayed up near the top fence, tucked in by the hedge near our house. I felt that we were far enough away from the fence, that we shouldn’t put them off from coming out.

It was a glorious evening and even though there wasn’t much around to look at, it was great to be spending this time with my sister, sharing what I love doing.

Right on time at just before 10 pm, we had our first owl photography opportunity! An adult had perched in the old oak tree right in front of us, I still needed to use aps-c mode to get a bit closer and was at a very height ISO, even with a slow shutter of 1/60’s. It was amazing to be able to get such a clear view of the owl, even if it was still further out that I was hoping. The adult the moved on, flying down the driveway.

As the owlets were still very loud, we decided to wait a bit longer to see if we would get a sighting of one. At 10:05pm we did! A little fluff ball landed up in the old oak tree! It was proper dark now so with my camera on a 2 second timer to reduce any camera shake I managed to get one in focus, no camera wobbles image at 1/15s! Something that I wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise.

I am really pleased with this image, even if it is hella noisy (gonna have to save them pennies for a used 600 f/4), to be able to see an owl that is usually only seen and photographed under continuous lighting or with a flash setup was just magical, and to be able to share it with my sister made it even more special.

While we did plan to go out again on the last night, we decided that, as this was the last night our family would be together for over a year (my other sister lives in New Zealand, and I don’t get down to Devon that often to see my brother or mum), we’d stay in and spend the evening all together.

Thanks to South West Optics, I was able to use my new Leofoto PG-2S gimbal, to get these images, which just wouldn’t have been possible without it. I have a whole blog post dedicated to the gimbal that you can read here, letting you know my thoughts on it having used it for the last few months.