General (County) update (again!) - 20th November 2010

• A first for me (I think) - two general updates in one day. But there is a reason for that.


• I set the video taping what I found out later to be Scotland's magnificent win against those pesky seth efrikans and went to see if I could see our barn owl(s) again -leaving their box at dusk.


• I was to see no barn owls - too many dog walkers about and rather too warm to force the barn owls out early to hunt in the cold.


• BUT.


• I normally have to drive 20 odd miles to see our short-eared owls on the ridgeway - but I didn't have to tonight!


• For the first time since we moved here - I watched a beautiful short-eared owl quarter (hunt) over a scrubby field behind the barn owl box, not half a mile from "Swift Half" and no more than two miles from the centre of one of the biggest towns in southern England.


• I went for maybe thirty years with only one sighting of a barn owl (near Inverness when I was sixteen) and none of any short-eared owls. Its not many people who can say that within half a mile of their house (near a large town or rural - it matters not) they can go out and see a barn owl and a short-eared owl in the same area on the same day.


• I feel very privileged indeed.


• At the top of this post is a terrible photo of the short-eared owl quartering at dusk, this evening (click it twice to enlarge).