Early this morning I followed an owl as misty vapours crept across the dark plough. The night had been cold after heavy rain. The sun burned brightly behind the grey. I startled a short-eared owl and it flapped a couple of hundred metres away then settled on the green of the winter wheat. I caught it on camera for one brief frame and tried to follow as it took off across the field, keeping its distance each time I got near. The dark fertile soil mottled with chalk was good camouflage. I was walking eastwards into the sun and had an appointment to get to so further attempts to photograph the ghostly apparition in such atmospheric weather conditions was sadly foiled. The mist drifted and the apparition disappeared.
I used to see the short-eared owls where I live regularly while out horse-riding in the mid 1980s, but hadn't seen them again until this winter. I saw one in Janurary. Like today it was by a footpath in the grassy margin of an arable field, and flew a short distance away. I watched it with binoculars for a while as it sat in the tramlines of winter wheat seedlings in a field scattered with glacial shingle. I could see the back of its head but this view changed without me shifting position as the bird did its owl trick of swivelling its head, looking straight at me.
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