Photographing my first wild Owls!

If you read my last post and watched my video from Gigrin Farm, where I met up with Ash aka Wildlife Photographer UK, you may have picked up on one comment he made where he said, that there was a secret society of photographers, who know all the locations, and you need to know the secret handshake to get in… Well, I still don’t know the handshake, but some local togs to me, reached out and invited me to go and photograph some Short-Eared Owls with them, which is just as good!

I met up with Jordey and Olly, who are both amazing photographers, and we popped over the boarder to see the owls on a very cold day in January.

The site where the owls are, is very popular, apparently someone leaked the location on Facebook and mayhem ensued.  Even knowing this, I was still shocked at just how many people were there, and I can see why, as the owls are quite literally in the fields next to the road.

When we arrived, there were at least 2 active owls already out hunting which was amazing to see already, they were incredibly far away though, but this was a great sign to me that we could get some fantastic action here.

We got all our gear and headed off to find a spot to set up. The owls had gone quite quiet in this time, which I was told, was not unusual. We picked our spot along a wall on the top side of the field on a footpath, got our gear out, and then in was a waiting game for the owls to pop back up again.

A first for me, was setting my camera into auto ISO, as the light/background was mixed with open sky as well as a wooded area. Rather than constantly having to keep an eye on my exposure meter and potentially miss images when having to change my ISO, or have an image with blown out highlights that couldn’t be recovered, the guys recommended this as the best setting. I have to say, this was actually amazing, and I would definitely use the auto ISO feature more.

While we waited, we saw a hunting Kestrel, which for me was amazing as I have not seen a wild one before, and to be able to see it hover was just brilliant to witness first hand. There was also a Red Kite hanging around, as well as the usual pheasants and crows.

After just over an hour of waiting, the owls finally popped back up out of the long grass, which signalled the start of a very special couple hours of photography.

It was a good job that I had been to Gigrin Farm before this and learnt that I needed to make sure I was keeping my finger on that shutter button, so I wouldn’t miss any images. Though it did mean I got a lot of owl bums, I was also able to capture a photo of the owl looking right at me as it flew along one of the stone walls. (I did have to use Photoshop on this image to remove the tops of the cars that were at either edge of the image).

The day was incredibly cold, so in a bit of an owl lull, I deployed the trusty hand warmers, which fit nicely into the palm of my hand, under my glove and doesn’t interfere with using the camera (very much wish I thought of this trick many moons ago as it would have made things a lot more comfortable for me on some of my photo days on the hill photographing the mountain bikes).

As the owls were quite far away, I used my Sony A7iv in the APS-C mode, as I do find that this camera can struggle to focus on such a tiny and fast moving subject and as I would be needing to crop anyway, by doing it in camera, I feel like I am cheating less…

In the time that the owls were active, I got a nice variety of images, from side on flybys, to some dives for voles, as well as soaring above the farmland.

It was just magical watching these birds flying and hunting, as not only was it my first time seeing Short-Eared Owls, it was also my first time seeing a ‘wild’ owl before, and it will definitely be an experience I won’t forget.

It was a shame that they didn’t come in a bit closer, but I think that as there were so many people around, that might have put them off. Both Jordie and Olly have been here and got some amazing images of the owls perched along the wall at a much closer distance than what they were flying at on this day. However, I am really pleased with the images that I did get, and this will definitely be a place that I will go back to (preferably on a weekday where it would be much quieter!)

I have to thank Jordey and Olly, for inviting me to tag along on this adventure with them, and hopefully we will be able to meet up again soon.