Owls In The Mist
This weeks photo is undoubtedly the worst photo I have ever taken. The significance is that I have spent a lifetime hoping to find young Long Eared Owls when they have just left the nest. It all came good last week when I found four young Owls perched together just as I had hoped for. Unfortunately on the day the forest was swathed in thick fog and driving drizzle and you could hardly see the Owls!!
During the afternoon the sun came out so I rushed back only to find that the Owls had split up with only two now being together.click here
Finding a good nest site of a pair of Kestrels is never easy with this weeks site being one of the most photogenic I have ever seen. It is a hole in the gable end of an old stone barn and I should have filmed it last year when they had four young. Unfortunately last year the road was closed due to a Carnival and I should have known better than to put it off until the following day – they had all fledged and gone!! In the bird photography world there are seldom second chances . 
Very rarely are you ever in a hide when the male Kingfisher alights and presents a fish to his female. If she accepts the fish then this is usually followed by copulation. I have only filmed this a handful of times in the last fifty years so last weeks action was most welcome even if the sun was not quite in the right position! 
Over the last month I have spent many hours under a camouflage cloth hoping a hunting male Long Eared Owl would land on a post that I had placed on the forest edge. Some nights I never saw him at all but on other nights, just to rub it in, he would hunt all around my car that was parked on the road 400 yards away!
After last weeks Wader disaster it is good to highlight one species that is going from strength to strength. The Nuthatches of this weeks blog were filmed in my local woodland and now their young are calling from all over the wood. Another pair are taking food from our garden and feeding young in a neighbours nearby. Apart from global warming no one is quite sure why Nuthatches are spreading north so fast with one possible sighting on Islay last week. Long may it continue! 
While we were all confined to our gardens enjoying almost unbroken sunshine our moorlands were drying out and providing little food for the young waders emerging from their eggs. Curlew numbers are already down 50% in the last ten years so this years weather will have added to their decline. Dunlin are the Pennines latest breeding wader and the only one that will benefit from the present rains. See some of the Waders encountered last week