Kes

A couple of photos of a Kestrel taken whilst out Owling the other day...its a pity the Owls didn't pose as nicely!

An unexpected sequence of events

Made some time this afternoon for a visit to see the Owls and did my usual trick of parking next to the "main" field, realising there were no owls showing, not wanting to stand with the horde of photographers and so went for a walk around the rest of the complex. The Short eared Owls weren't exactly playing ball today - for the most part they were keeping down tucked away in the grass but a walk up the hill on the far side of the complex produced between four and five Owls, one of which perched relatively close and allowed the best images of the day to be obtained.

It was only when I got home and reviewed some of the other images I'd taken today that I realised that I had captured a sequence of events I'd heard about previously but never witnessed before - a Kestrel stealing prey from an Owl! The Owl in the following images is actually the same bird as the one in the above photo's so I can't help feeling sorry for it as it posed so nicely for me!

Sorry about the extreme croppage but the prey item can just be made out in the Owl's talons (click for bigger)

"yoink"

"i'll be having that"

Cheeky bugger!

Sunny

Went out with the intention of trying to photograph stuff that were not Short eared Owls today as it was glorius and sunny but things didn't quite go to plan.
Firstly I went and checked a few Little Owl sites but couldnt find a single bird, let alone photgraph one but at least this Kestrel provided something to point the camera at:

After this initial failure I headed over to Ravensthorpe reservoir on the hunt for a Smew. Unusrprisingly with the water levels being so low on the small side no Smews were seen either.

see....no Smews

And so, inevitably even, I ended up at Maidwell. No birds were showing upon arrival in the "main" field and so I embarked on a full scale trek around the whole complex to help get away from the crowds. Decent if a bit distant views of 4 or 5 owls were rewards for the trek. Plus by the time I'd wandered back towards the car the owls were up over the main viewing field. Win.