Short-eared Owl in flight On saturday morning I had arranged to go to Richmond Park with two friends to try and photograph some of the Red deer stags, hopefully catching them rutting. All my camera batteries charged and equipment at the ready for a 2.30am departure. The trip would take about 4hours so leaving us plenty of time for photography. To cut a long story short one person obviously needed more sleep than the others that night and by the time 4.00am had been and gone and he had still not arrived we realised it would be too late to make the trip.

After trying to ring sleeping beauty on countless occasions with no response we decided to change our plans and make a shorter trip to Aust Wharf, Bristol, where three Short-eared owls had been reported. As we were nearing our new destination sleeping beauty rang us to say he had overslept, we both felt quite sorry for him (as we both knew he would be gutted for letting us down) but we were not going to let him know that. He agreed to follow on down once he had got a few more zzz's in.

Later that morning once we were all there cameras on tripods, at the ready along with many other photographers the owls started to hunt and flew past us on a few occasions giving us plenty of photo opportunities of flight shots. One of the Owls landed on a perch 50 metres from us and we all managed photos (a bit closer would have been good but still got some nice shots).

By the end of the day we were all totally exhausted but all very happy with the outcome and more than glad that sleeping beauty had taken a bite of the apple that made us miss Richmond Park!