Result

"Too windy for owls," said one person after another this afternoon - all trying to convince ourselves that it wasn't too windy for owls ackshully, and they would definitely come out sooner or later to do some hunting in the unforecast sunshine. But in reality we all knew that it was indeed far too windy for raptors that hunt, in part, by listening for the tiny rustling noises of their prey as it moves through the grass. When I parked on the lane and got out of the car I almost got blown off my feet, and after I'd walked round to the coppice and met up with Hillyblips, we stayed chatting in the shelter of the trees for the next two and a half hours without seeing so much as a hint of an owl.

Just before 4pm HB left, and I decided to risk leaving the coppice and walking further along the wall. The chap I was following suddenly called "Owl!", and for just a couple of minutes there were three up, bickering with each other and their ever-attendant corvids, but generally staying pretty much in the middle of the field. I got one decent flypast, the owl picked out against the blue of the distant trees in the fast-fading light, and though my wind-flayed eyes were struggling and I had no confidence in my focus, it turned out that the R5's tracking had done well, and most of my images were fine. Luckily HB had also spotted wings as she drove along the lane, and stopped in time to get what looks like the same owl on a different pass across the field.

I've havered for ages between these two images. The second one has the advantage of that glorious orange stare, and I also like the fact that the owl appears to be trying to attract my attention by semaphoring 'J'. But this one, which was the next in the sequence and was taken only a fraction of a second later, has more movement as the owl, confident now that I'd noticed it, began a banking turn.