Farlington Shorties

Recently up to 3 Short-eared owls have been wintering at Farlington Marshes HWT and after seeing some shots posted online I decided to pay them a visit on Friday 11th November! It was a nice calm, cold sunny day and in the morning I visited the Scaup at Ripley farm reservoir. It showed well in the scope but nowhere near close enough for a decent snaps!
I arrived at Farlington around 1:30pm and immediately made my way round to the point field where they tend to roost in the long grass before 'normally' flying around 2:30pm onwards! On the way round I did manage to get a few pics, Moorhen, Meadow pipit and a Wren.







Arriving at the point field I was greeted to around c20 very loud 'photographers', even though the Owls were only roosting 50yards away they continued to bellow out instructions on where one was visible! Shortly after I was joined by a familiar face Paul loader who I first met last year photographing a Great northern diver in West Sussex! After a quick catch up we wasn't surprised when the owls came out of roost they headed straight out to the main marsh, can't really blame them with all the noise going on and being silhouetted against the sky! Me and Paul from the previous year knew of a gate within the point field which last year have some tremendous views as they hunt down to a few metres at times so we headed straight to it after briefly stopping to photograph this male stonechat! 



Once arriving at the gate it wasn't long before we were treated to our first views but unfortunately they were just a little too distant! For the next 20 minutes or so they kept teasing us heading straight for us and then just cruising away as they do! Then from out of nowhere 1 bird must have looped round behind us and came straight past at close range albeit brief. We moved position once further down into a secluded little gap and here they showed well for at least 30 minutes and finally we managed the shots we had come for! I'm pretty happy with my results but they don't really do the Owls justice on actually how hard they are to lock onto constantly twisting and turning below the sea wall! After our fill we left around 4pm not before being told we were scaring all the birds from feeding which was total nonsense! A combination of not watching us for the previous 3 hours and other jealous photographers watching on as the birds porned it in front of us they came to the conclusion we were disturbing the birds........OK!!



































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