August is the time to visit Spitsbergen to look for Polar Bears as there is less sea-ice then and many of the remote fiords are accessible to the cruise-ships. Any wildlife enthusiast lucky enough to visit Spitsbergen will have Polar Bear and Ivory Gull at the top of their wish list.With luck you may come across a Polar Bear on a kill surrounded by Ivory Gulls. It sounds fanciful but that is what happened on my seventh and last visit!!
For the male Barn Owl breeding time is his most demanding time of the year.For four months he has to provide all the food for the female and their young.I have never spent as much time filming any species as I have on my pair of Barn Owls as they have five young about to fledge necessitating constant demands for Voles, Shrews and Mice. Not every filming session was successful and I have spent long hours looking at an empty field or dodging the farmers cattle!!
It is now ten years since I last filmed Barn Owls in summer but I had not forgotten how spectacular they are as they hunt at sunset on a summer evening. Technically they give you lots of problems being white birds against a shadowy background and they never fly where you want them to!! However, I have just spent four months in the company of a pair of Barn Owls picking off shots of these ghosts as they carry out their crepuscular activities. More to follow next week!!
There have not been many years when I have had the pleasure of filming three different pairs of Long Eared Owls. While the Spring weather, in general, has been awful one of those pairs did manage to rear five young with their success more dependant on the availability of voles rather than the weather.
Now is the time during your walks in the Pennine forests to listen out for a sound that you will only ever hear at this time of year. It is the hunger calls of recently fledged Long Eared Owls and resembles that of a creaking gate. I have spent most of early summer filming in these forests , so this week we will concentrate on the young owls and next week the adults.
I had already checked out this superb Kestrel nest-site earlier in Spring and as no Kestrels were seen I presumed that it was not being used this year. It was, therefore, a pleasant surprise to see five young ready to fledge when I passed by the other day. Unfortunately, when I returned to film the day after two of the young had already flown and only one feed by the male occurred before the other three went – for once a good result story.