Camouflage

 Spring has brought us our first sightings of the tawny owls in daylight.  We have seen them during the winter months, but only as silhouettes landing on a branch outside of the bedroom window at dusk.  Now that the weather is changing they have returned to their numerous perches in the garden.   They are amazingly well camouflaged against the brown and green of the tree trunks and branches.  If you don't know where to look, then chances are you won't see them.

Thankfully, for myself  if not the owls, blackbirds are very good at finding them.

Blackbirds will try and chase the owls off.  I could hear their alarm calls from up the garden and decided to investigate. Three blackbirds swooped passed me into the trees, chirping furiously trying to mob the owls to move away.  I spotted the lower bird immediately.  The second, I did not notice until I changed position to get a better shot.

I love the way they keep an eye on what I'm doing whilst pretending that they aren't.  They tolerate me getting fairly close, after all these years I think they understand that I won't do them any harm.

Camera Shy

In the very first post on this blog, I mentioned the Tawny owls that regularly roosted in the large conifers that mark the boundary of the garden.  They are a pair, one of them is more skittish than the other and will fly off if you hang around to long.   It's mate, tends to pretend you aren't there while keeping a half open eye on you but does tolerate me trying to take photos of it.   We were fortunate a couple of years ago to take some pictures of branching chicks in the trees (you can find that post here) but the adults themselves are elusive.

Tawny owls in the area appear to be thriving.  You can hear them calling when darkness falls and their calls come from all directions, warnings for others to keep out of their territory,  Our neighbour has told me that he can hear eight or nine of them when returning from the village pub.  We see them land in the tree outside the bedroom window but they are gone before you can get a camera trained on them.  They have a couple of trees in the garden that they favour to sleep in during the day.  At this moment in time, they have also added our neighbour's willow tree as one of their roosting spots.

They've chosen well as they pick the most photograph unfriendly location.  High up, in the gloom and blocked by thin branches (the camera tends to focus on these so the owls almost always manage to be out of focus).

The picture below is one of the better shots I've taken as it the owl decided to sun itself in a different tree that was relatively unobscured.

Hopefully, one day I'll get the opportunity to get a perfect shot of one or both of them.

This post is dedicated to my older brother.  Every time he pays a visit, the owls aren't around and he was beginning to think they were fictitious.

Three of a Kind - Part 2

I mentioned in one of the first posts on this blog that we have a pair of Tawny Owls that roost quite regularly in the garden.  They are almost always in a tall conifer tree, obscure by branches in the shadows and its next to impossible to get a decent shot.

Well the adult birds may have been difficult to capture, their offspring however proved to be quite indulging.

I took these pictures before I got my Olympus Pen EPL1.  these were taken with a Fujifilm compact camera.  We couldn't believe it when we looked up and saw these three in the apple tree, pretending that we weren't actually there.

The young Tawny Owls hung around in the apple trees for the best part of a week, although all three of them were never together in the same spot again.

Two of the three opted to stay close to each other, never being more than a branch or two away.  The third one seemed quite happy to be going it alone.

I keep hoping against hope the the parents will have chicks again.  Perhaps they have but the nest is in another tree in another garden.  Still, it always pays to look up.  You never know what could be sitting there.