Barn Owl

I payed another visit to see the superb Barn Owl due to the light being better than before. I spent 1 hour standing in the field waiting and wasn't disappointed with the views and even managed to get 13 frames off the camera. I set the camera up at ISO 400 1/1000 -1 STOP. These two images are my favourite from the short session.

In the fading light

With the light fading all to quickly last night, I was still able to get some images of this Barn Owl. I did have to ramp up ISO to a 1000 though. Light is everything in photography but good views are worth their weight in gold too.

Twitching in the slow lane

It's fair to say that twitching isn't my main artery for my birding due to the fact that I personally prefer not being sat in the car for long periods of time or I just haven't got the spare time to twitch. Therefore it's taken a long while to get to 400 BOU CLUB and to be honest it's not a race and I enjoy my birding/photography how it is. 

So yesterday I enjoyed having some spare time with Martin Blow at Church Norton Pagham watching the Hudsonian Whimbrel in flight and the very smart Terek Sandpiper which were both ticks for me. Ok, the Whimbrel wasn't much to look at but nice to see the No white on the rump as it banked round in flight. The Terek Sand though was something else for me, bright yellowish small legs a banana shape bill, dark stripes down the scaps, really nice.

The Hud was my 400th and the Terek being my 401 BOU, I've waited a long time to get there but quickly passed the mile stone within a hour as it was a small walk from one to the other. Sounds easy? well, half hour before we arrived the Terek had flown off and Martin thought he had just drove me over two hours to see the Hud  he saw last week again but while we were looking for the Hud news broke again that the Terek came back to the same bit of spit as before. Martin left me to find the Hud as he went to see the Terek. I was dead lucky to pick it out in flight and still managed to get others onto it too. A quick stroll back to where I started from and the rest is history. A piece of piss as they say!

Record shot of the Terek Sandpiper with a Oystercatcher in the foreground for size comparison