Long Eared Owl

We have had such a lovely day today at the National Botanic Gardens of Wales catching up on the last 25 years with a couple we used to work with at Sainsburys Camden. We both got together as couples whilst working at that store and worked in the same departments so used to meet at district meetings and on courses but we never really socialised together much at all. But we had been chatting on FB recently a little, discovered we were into the same type of things and decided to meet up whilst we were near their home in Swansea. It felt really natural and we didn't stop talking for 6 hours solid, so much that we really couldn't tell you much about the gardens themselves, even though they looked really nice. 
We dropped in to one of the birds of prey flying displays which was fabulous. This long eared owl spent a lot of time hopping between the benches and posts and not too much time actually flying much. I loved the way he looked like he had a little skirt on in this shot.  There's couple more birds in extras - a snowy owl and a white tailed eagle.