Local Barn Owls
Shortly after my wife and I moved into the house in Staffordshire where we now live, I was driving home after dark along the single track lane that leads to our home when the headlights of my car illuminated a small white object on top of one of the fenceposts by the side of the lane. Bringing my car slowly to a stop, I was feet away from a barn owl that was perched on the fencepost. For a brief few seconds the barn owl looked back at me before lifting off the fencepost and flying away, disappearing into the darkness of the field to the side of the lane.
Over the years following this first encounter, I have from time to time caught further sightings of the barn owls that live in, and hunt around, the fields that surround my home. Being normally nocturnal, these brief glimpses of these hunters of the night world have mainly been after dark when they have been illuminated in my car’s headlights as they hunt along the edges of the fields by the roads and lanes or, as on the first encounter, perched on a fencepost by the roadside all too briefly before flying away as my car approaches. On a handful of occasions, I have seen a barn owl flying at dusk or late in the afternoon around the fields near my home. The sightings of these beautiful, ghostly white owls are always special however brief they may be.
When the third national lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic began in England on 6th January 2021, my wife and I again found ourselves fortunate that there are several different walks that we can do from our home, along the the lanes and roads and over the paths through the local fields. On one particularly cold winter afternoon, we were walking along one of these lanes not far from our home when we were surprised by a barn owl that flew off a fencepost in a field to the side of the lane. Over the next week or so, we regularly saw this barn owl as it hunted over the same couple of fields. Having worked out where the barn owl was hunting, I was fortunate to be given access to these fields by the landowner.
For the next week, each afternoon, I would leave home and walk to the fields where the barn owl was hunting. Setting my camera equipment up, I would conceal myself in a hedgerow at the edge of one of the fields and wait patiently for the barn owl to appear. On the first afternoon, the barn owl landed on a gate post not far from where I was concealed in the hedgerow. To my amazement, it then flew off the gate post and landed on a fencepost even closer to me! The barn owl stayed on the fencepost for a few minutes allowing me to photograph it before flying off to continue hunting over the fields. I could not believe my luck. I had wanted to photograph my local barn owls for many years, having previously tried but failed to do so on several occasions, and on this first afternoon I had only been waiting for a few hours when I finally achieved this goal.
Over the course of the week, as the weather warmed, the barn owl appeared progressively later each afternoon. Unfortunately, the fields where the barn owl was hunting are below the brow of a small hill that obscures the setting sun casting the fields into shadow. Watching this barn owl hunt in the blue hour of twilight at dusk was a welcome relief to the darkness of the Covid-19 pandemic, proving once again the restorative and healing properties of nature. With the advances in modern digital camera technology, I was able to continue photographing in these low light levels making images of this ghostly white barn owl hunting in this blue crepuscular light.
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