I have always maintained that in wildlife photography your results are directly proportionate to the time that you put in and last week I had a perfect example of this with my local Barn Owl. I spent days watching the hunting pattern of this bird and noted that it started to hunt around a field by the farm sometime after 3.30pm. I erected a post by the edge of the field opposite an old farm trailer, under which I could hide covered by a camouflage cloth.
During the first week of waiting the Owl, on one occasion, hunted along the hedge and then when it was only twenty feet from the post it turned away and hunted across the other side of the field. In the second week some afternoons were too dark to even go under the cloth. Then along came an afternoon when the sun was shining until 3.30pm. It would have been too dark to film after 4.00pm so I waited in anticipation. At 3.40pm he appeared down the hedge and proceeded to hunt, working his way towards the post and me! He flew up onto the post and paid no attention to the shutter of the camera as I picked off my photos in the failing light.This is when luck took over for he stared at the ground and pounced on a Short Tailed Field Vole, returning to the post and transferring it to his bill before flying off!! Click here for the photos

As predicted the first International Goose count on Islay last week has produced a lower than expected count of just over 30,000 birds. The reason for this lower number is that very few juvenile birds have returned with the adult Geese due entirely to a devastating Spring blizzard in eastern Greenland. It was already known that Knot and Sanderling, that breed in eastern Greenland, had not been able to breed because of the snow cover.The Barnacle Geese that rear their young on Greenlands 200 metre sea-cliffs were expected to bring few young birds and that is exactly what has happened. Perhaps now they will be left to feed in peace on Islay?
No trip to Islay is complete without a few photos of its raptors and this weeks gallery includes some that we encountered last week together with all those Barnacle Geese. click here

There is one bonus of wild weather on Islay in Autumn, you may be treated to a spectacular sunset at dusk. That is exactly what happened on our recent visit – six days of stormy weather then two sunny days that produced incredible colours at sunset. Add to that thousands of roosting Geese then a flight through of seven Whooper Swans and you have this weeks blog photo. No Autumn is ever the same on Islay and this years  was the presence of over a thousand Whooper Swans. With more and more Barley being grown for the distilleries the passage of Whooper Swans from Iceland is more prolonged and, as has happened this year, hundreds have remained to gobble up the spilt grain. click here
Islay Geese are a spectacle in their own right and next weeks gallery is devoted to them.

For the last couple of weeks the Hedgehog in this weeks photo has been visiting our garden later and later each evening. It finally got to 10.00pm before the food was left overnight and it must now be curled ups in a bed of leaves until next Spring. Lets hope that we don’t have any unseasonal mild spells over winter to cause it to awaken which would be a disaster.click here
We have just returned from a wild week on Islay and the next couple of weeks galleries will be full of Whooper Swans and Geese.

The 31st October is a special day and I don’t think I have ever taken any photos on that day before. The weather was perfect but the subject matter extremely wary. In two hours under the camouflage cloth I only managed a couple of photos, one of which is this weeks blog photo.
In the late afternoon I hid awaiting the local Barn Owl to start hunting. Five minutes before sunset it appeared along a hawthorne hedge that was covered in berries. Although it never came close the gallery photos have a perfect Autumn atmosphere with plenty of red visible.click here

On one of those superb recent Autumn days I visited the coast at Southport to look for Waders. Not a wader in sight but Geese were everywhere including one group of 14,000 Pink Footed Geese! Grey Lags and Canadas were also feeding in the salt-marsh and the best bird seen was a distant hunting Peregrine which is included in this weeks Gallery for record purposes.  Some Waxwings are in Scotland so fingers crossed for a visit locally this year! click here