Incoming

It was a slightly strange afternoon at the owl field: the light came and went, and so did the Shorties. At one point I think there were three flying, but I can only absolutely swear to two. 

There seems to be a general feeling that several others have now left the area, either to search out land with less depleted vole colonies, or even to return to their breeding grounds. Either could well be true, but it's hard to be absolutely sure, because the longer days mean more hunting hours, so it's possible that these generally solitary birds are now managing their flights to avoid getting into conflict with each other. They have enough trouble with the corvids and other raptors, without fighting other owls. I think you'd need to spend a great many hours circling the field and watching what went on, and take a lot of high-quality photos that allowed you to distinguish different individuals, before you could be absolutely sure of the situation.

One thing I am fairly sure of is that the apparent fall in the number of available Shorties has led to an equivalent reduction in photographers, which I'm sure will delight the local residents, and most of the people I met today are either people I've known for years, or they've spent enough time on the scarp this season for it to feel as though I have. That said, I heard one guy boasting to a couple of other people that he was the person responsible for the Instagrammers scrum at the field this winter, having posted highly precise directions to the exact point from which he reckoned the best photos were being taken - and if I never set eyes on him again, it won't be a day too soon.

Both these images come from the single close approach I had this afternoon when light, owl, camera and operator all worked well together. I took plenty of photos across the three and a half hours I was at the field, but nothing else is remotely as good as the thirty or so I have from this short burst of activity, and it's likely that in the end they'll be the only ones I keep.