Owls and Buzzards

It's been a while since my last blog, but that has been due, to how busy I have been over the past couple of months.  Most of my photography recently, has been following our 'Little Owl' family, who reside not far from my home. In addition, I have been developing a plan to entice Buzzards to a location on a friends land.

The owls have not disappointed, and have been very active since April, producing one offspring and fighting off a family of Blackbirds and Magpies, who have all been constantly 'mobbing' them. In fact, the Magpies in particular, have been in a large group and very aggressive. Fortunately, our owls were not to be intimidated and constantly fought off the marauding mob.









Buzzards have always fascinated me and I have photographed them a lot from distance and from my hide. However, I wanted to get closer to them, to achieve specific shots of them coming in to land. Having found a suitable location within one Buzzards territory, it was now time to entice them to a spot, which would give me perfect angles, lighting and opportunities. So, I chose a spot in the centre of a field and dug a hole, big enough to accept a fairly large tree trunk, which I had chosen and cut down to suit. - With the new 'perch' set up, I left a 'trail-cam' in place for a few days to see what we could capture.

Trail Cam image


When I retrieved the trail-cam, I was pleased to find that the buzzard was using the new perch, but only very early in the morning, or late evening. I'm happy to make early starts, but had a lot of work on the go, so decided to set up a remote triggering device, which would wirelessly trigger my 'spare' DSLR camera to take the shot when a Buzzard approached the perch. - With the trigger (Camtraptions v3) a few meters away from the post and my camera and 200-500 lens around 25 mtrs away, focused on the perch and hidden in my hide, it was now set up to take shots of any Buzzard that might land on the post, even though, I was many miles away!

4 days later, I retrieved the camera and here are some of the images that it captured.






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Comments

  1. RhodesiaJune 24, 2021 at 12:31 PM

    A brilliant set of photos, I am though always impressed with your photography. I have missed the Little Owls here this year. They are around as I hear them, but they have moved their nesting spot and I have no idea where they may be. Too many barns around they could be anywhere!

    A bientot, Diane

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