Owls

I've been trying to get some shots of short eared owls for a few weeks now, but for a variety of reasons they have refused to show whenever I turn up to the places that they had, until shortly before my arrival, been seen and photographed.  I was starting to think that I might be some sort of an owl jinx....

I had said to Cathy that if "Owl Problem" didn't get resolved shortly I would need to head off for the east coast where there is apparently a plethora of the things.  They've even (frustratingly) featured on the national news programmes.  That really  rubbed salt into the wound.

But JDO very kindly threw me a lifeline.  Jill has been blipping some lovely owl pictures recently.  She and I met up  today, and she did me the enormous favour of introducing me to some of the Cotswold owl population. I am more grateful than I can say.  I've been on Blip for nearly 9 years bar a few weeks now.  So it was slightly surreal to only now meet Jill (whose journal I have been following for practically all that time) and feel as though I was meeting up with an old friend.

Most of the owl action happened in the last 30 minutes of the light, and I'd taken off the teleconverter by that point, which might have been a mistake as the birds didn't come particularly close today.  But what we did get was both a barn owl and 3 short eared owls.  I've used up several of my remaining extras with shots of both species.  As I've mentioned the birds were some way away so these are quite heavily cropped, but just wonderful to be able to see and photograph.  

(The images are in reverse order - that is to say the main shortie is the one taken last when the light was nearly gone, whereas the barn owls were a few minutes earlier when there was still some lingering golden light).