Short-eared Owl

[colincurry]

Walking along the River Great Ouse last week, an owl shot out of some willows in front of us. At first, I thought it was a dirty barn owl. As it climbed away from us, it was set upon by several crows. I managed several shots on a cloudy morning against the grey sky. Closer examination of these showed that it was, in fact, a short-eared owl.









I have since learnt that around 70 were counted crossing the Norfolk coast from Europe. Apparently, they have done very well this year feeding on a glut of lemmings.

Colin

[aeshna5]

Nice shots. Hope to find one on my local patch soon. Used to be a regular species before I started watching there.

[earthdragon64]

I'd seen the odd one or two before this year, but when I was on the Uists for a week back in May, it seemed that almost every stretch of road had one quartering in the fields alongside. We got some great views.

Regards, Audrey.

[JeffH]

Lovely birds aren't they Colin. Believe it or not, until a few years ago there used to be a regular winter roost of 6 - 8 S-eOs on Oakington airfield - that's the so-called 'brownfield site' on which they're intending to build the new town of Northstowe

Nice shots by the way

Jeff
(Schedule 1 Licence holder for Kingfishers, Barn Owls and Avocets)

[KentYeti]

Nice shots of a lovely bird.

Cheers,

Bryan

[Dogghound]

Nice photo's, its a 1st winter male if your interested.

[PMG]

Originally Posted by JeffH

Lovely birds aren't they Colin. Believe it or not, until a few years ago there used to be a regular winter roost of 6 - 8 S-eOs on Oakington airfield - that's the so-called 'brownfield site' on which they're intending to build the new town of Northstowe

Nice shots by the way

Jeff
(Schedule 1 Licence holder for Kingfishers, Barn Owls and Avocets)

Same with the industrial site in North Wales where there was a large roost - again 6-8 birds - I've not been for 12 months or more - but it had large units and lots of empty plots which will perhaps eventually get built up? If there is a glut of shorties perhaps that roost will again be worth visiting on the way home from a day on the Welsh coast ........

Pauline

[htcdude]

Great shots Colin! Good number of these birds have been coming in down south, hoping some might stop here

Nige

[RoyW]

Originally Posted by Dogghound

Nice photo's, its a 1st winter male if your interested.

I'd be interested in how you can tell!
(I'm sure I could look it up, but I'd thought I'd post instead because I'm sure that others are wondering!).

[Dogghound]

Males are often much paler than females although there is some overlap. The streaking is much more reduced, especially around the abdomen and thighs. The streaking gets very narrow in this region too, and the background colour is pale white/cream/buff. In females this streaking is thicker and the background colour of the abdomen is buff. Both of these can vary between the sexes but as a rule around 70%ish can be sexed like this. The definitive way in this photo is by the barring on the outer secondaries, on the male the inner web is clear (or has very faint bars), in the female these bars are quite clear and pronounced on the inner web. This gives the wing a darker appearance in females, as with the rest of the body.

The age can be determined by the tail feathers, Adult birds show banding towards the end of the tail feather, this is often not very uniform. The bird in the photo has a clear white edge to its tail (you have to zoom in). The overall tail feather structure looks rather juvenile too, with neatly spaced bars. Ageing becomes easier further into winter when the tertials of first winter birds begin to wear and look very bright.

I am pretty obsessed with aging and sexing birds (think its a ringing thing) so I often look at these fantastic photo's a little closer than the average person.