Photography Day

Hedwig, Snowy Owl

Last Friday a good friend of mine, Darren Rowley, came along to one of our owl photographic days. Darren helped me when I first started getting in to photography with all manner of things, and even came with me to a shop to try a few different cameras out before I settled on Nikon.

Having not seen Darren for a while, I freed up the day so I could tag along for the photography and of course to catchup. Here are just a few of the photos I took.

We currently use a few new places/perches for out owls. A few reasons for this, but mainly it saves walking to the very far end of the reserve when there are plenty good enough perches in the woods half way along!

As always, we try and place the owls in two or three different areas each for variety, and try and keep the perches as natural as possible.

We only fly the tawny owl and barn owl on our photographic days. Time is the main reason why we limit it to these two, but they are also the most used to flying "off-site" so to speak.

Our barn owls are currently flown over our wetland area, but once our wildflower meadow is in full flow it will be stunning to see them fly above the colour of the flowers.

Unfortunately our gate has seen better days... or more accurately, has seen our three highland steers! We can still make use of it however at the right angles.

Of course, you have to finish the day with Ethel! :-)

Once the day was over, Darren and I decided to stay on and do a bit with the mammals and the soft evening light. I do love the owls, but I am a mammal man at heart... and I always think that shows with my photographs too.

We spent a bit of time with McTavish, including having trainers slashed and bitten!

Finishing up at the foxes and catching the late light before time beat us.

The sun went behind some clouds and the evening was over, but I went back a couple of nights later to catch the very late light in our deer paddock. I didn't get exactly what I was after, and had seen the night before, but I was quite pleased with these two.

I have been working with the pine martens a lot recently. Photos of them coming up later this week.

Thanks for looking :-)