Finally Photographing Short Eared Owls
I had been trying to get some good images of short-eared owls close to my home in Essex. After several attempts I thought I just wasn’t going to be successful. The owls were there but just too far away to photograph. It wasn’t all bad; I did get good images of a male marsh harrier and some shots of a kestrel hovering.
Then one afternoon just before Christmas I thought I’d give it another go. I arrived on site at around 3 pm. The owls normally start hunting late afternoon. You have to hope they are out hunting before the light fades and of course you also have to hope that they fly close enough to get decent pictures, something which had eluded me so far.
As I waited patiently for the owls I was thinking just how patient you have to be for wildlife photography. The number of times we wildlife photographers go home empty handed starts to add up. But I also thought how nice it is just being outside watching the wildlife even if it isn’t always close enough to photograph.
To cut a long story short, on this occasion, success! The owls turned up, the light wasn’t bad and it was close enough to get some good pictures. What a great experience. Well worth putting the time and effort in to finally get the shots.
So the message of this blog is persistence often pays off in the end.
