Dawn Ghosts
“When the owl sings, the night is silent”
In May of 2021 after lockdown restrictions were lifted I was eager to get out with my camera and find a new project. I moved to Gloucester with work the previous year but hadn’t been able to explore yet. I move every 2 or 3 years so have to begin from scratch finding a new patch for photography, as a result I’ve become a dab hand at researching online and finding new places.
During one research session I found a site that is quite well known for Short-eared Owls called the Hawling, I had missed out on Shorties the previous winter due to the restrictions so I was eager to have a look at this new location ahead of them arriving from Scandinavia in the winter.
The Hawling, if you have never been, is two fields surrounded by a stone wall with agricultural land on all sides and a small pine plantation to the north. The farmer who owns the fields leaves them to grow throughout the year to encourage the mice and voles and in turn the owls that live there.
There are many places to park a car on the verge around the south and east of the fields so shooting from the comfort of a vehicle is an option but I much prefer to get out and be mobile. The northern edge of the fields are also accessible albeit with a short walk from the road.
When I first arrived there was another photographer there and after chatting for a while she told me that it was a good place for Barn Owls too this was good news as I haven’t had a good Barn Owl site since I moved from Suffolk years ago.
ABOVE A pair of Barn Owls quartering the rough grassland.
Over the coming weeks I returned a few hours before sunset to see if the owls would show and sure enough they did, sometimes two at a time. Watching them hunt and fly back with prey I was able to work out where they were nesting so I could get in a good position to capture them on the flight back with food.
ABOVE An icon of summer, a backlit hovering Barn Owl.
I eventually worked out through long term observing that there were three regular Barn Owls hunting, two who nested in the closest farm and one from a little further away. The farmer feeds the closest pair throughout the winter to help them out.
As the seasons changed so did the behaviour, as the grass grew into summer the owls favoured perch hunting, sitting on posts and walls listening for rustling of grass and in-audible squeaks from voles in the field.
ABOVE I stalked this owl for 100 metres using the tall grass of the verge to hide.
I always prefered sunrise to photograph the Barn Owls, the site is well known and gets busy at sunset if the owls are regularly hunting but in the mornings I only ever saw one other person, a chap called Bob who lives locally and has been photographing there for years.
I always look for patterns in behaviour with regular visits to better place myself to get photos, watching the owls at sunrise they were regularly perching along the road verge, flying from one post to another, this made them predictable so I was able to get really close sometimes.
ABOVE This was taken in the first rays of sunlight peeking over the horizon.
Since the owls had become predictable I was able to use the light better making the most of my time visiting, it can be incredibly tiring getting up at four in the morning to be in position for sunrise then doing a full days work. Often I would head back out for sunset Roe Deer and Hare too, for most of the summer I was like a zombie if I had been out three times that week.
ABOVE A stunning atmospheric morning at sunrise, these are the conditions I love to photograph in.
Once the winter nights drew in I stopped visiting the owls as there wasn’t enough time from finishing work to get there and the light was generally poor on the days I could visit.
I did pop down periodically to check if any Short Eared Owls had arrived from December onwards, the site was amazing for them in previous years. There were three in the fields over the winter of 21-22 but they rarely came out before sunset, I only saw one of them on one visit.
ABOVE The only Shortie sighting I had over the winter.
Spring sprung and the nights were longer so I began visiting again to see if the Barn Owls had made it through the winter but 2022 was not a great vole year so I rarely saw them, I didn’t visit as much as I had in the previous year.
On the occasions I did visit I got some new shots despite it being a much more challenging year for them.
ABOVE A composite of 4 images showing the hover to drop of a Barn Owl.
My first visit in 2023 was in April, three regular owls were still quartering the field but one of them was much darker in colour than in previous years, the creamy brown colouring was more pronounced.
ABOVE My first visit in 2023 was off to a good start
ABOVE The really dark coloured individual almost glowing with the sun on its back.
I only visited 4 times this year as what started out as a great season soon dried up with no owl activity from the end of April, I think this is due to a certain large raptor moving into the area. I have read that Buzzards hunt Barn Owls on Salisbury Plain which has had the effect that none of them come out until after dark, although there are plenty of Buzzards in the area the raptor I saw regularly would definitely scare me into only coming out when it wasn’t about.
I don’t know for certain that this is what happened but for most of April three Barn Owls were still out hunting four hours after sunrise which was great for me but obviously meant that it wasn’t a good year for voles, they weren’t catching enough voles throughout the night so had to hunt longer.
The natural world is a delicate balance of gaining energy through eating versus losing energy through hunting so who knows maybe they succumbed to hunger. I have in the past found a dead Buzzard in a tree which I sent for a post mortem with the results coming back that it had zero body fat and died of starvation so it does happen.
ABOVE A shot I had planned in my head for three years finally happened, damn those little twigs and cluttered backgound.
The morning I took the image above was one of my most memorable, the owls were in fine form flying too close to me to focus sometimes and they seemed to go eveywhere I wanted them to.
I was hunkered down low against a wall which had a lovely pool of light created by the shadows from the rising sun, as I looked at it I thought how amazing it would be if an owl flew through that magical pool of light, ten minutes later I was smiling from ear to ear after an owl did exactly that.
ABOVE The pinnacle shot of my time photographing these Barn Owls
My final series of shots of the Dawn Ghosts was on a misty morning towards the end of April, the forecast was to be good but when I got there there was a low mist that didn’t look like it would burn off anytime soon.
I went up to the fields anyway thinking there might at least be some deer there but to my surprise the owls were out hunting again.
I had another great morning shooting wide photos to show the mood and atmosphere of the morning, the light was lovely and diffused but still bright enough to get good photos.
ABOVE Some of my favourite Barn Owl images they have a painterly feeling with the mist.
ABOVE A couple of misty close up shots to accompany the atmospheric wide ones.
Photographing these Barn Owls taught me the value of persistence and observation. So many times I see photographers chasing after the animals they try to photograph and getting the same shots everytime, there’s a lot to be said for sitting back and just watching what the animal does. I guess that is a circumstance of the world we live in now where everything is on demand, I’m no better in some aspects, I would rather spend £10 more to have something the next day than wait three days to save a tenner.
I mention earlier in this blog about getting a post mortem on a Buzzard, if you find a dead raptor contact the Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme to report it, they are not accepting dead birds at the moment due to bird flu but when I found the Buzzard they were. I took the bird home and kept it in the freezer until the package they send me arrived. Its very straight forward, seal the bird in a bag with a little absorbent sachet they provide and stick that in the box and send it back using the pre-paid details, once they have done the post mortem they send you a report on the bird.