Barn owl

If it's not mixing my metaphors too much, I've had a bee in my bonnet lately about trying to get a shot of a barn owl. I know where they fly and saw them yesterday when a fisherman told me he'd seen one quartering across the marsh near Pyrford from about 4 pm onwards.

So today I went to the same spot earlier and persuaded Gill to come along too. Bye it was cold, a real chill in the wind. But it hadn't put off the owls and they were there again. I reckoned that the best chance of getting a useable pic was to get between the setting sun and the owl so I could use a lower ISO as dusk approached, hoping that the light would illuminate the bird.

The Nikon D200 is a decent camera but it's not full-frame and doesn't have the low light or faster autofocus capabilities of some of the more sophisticated models that have emerged since it was new on the market. So you have to do the best with what you have. Of course, I'd have liked it to have come closer. We all want better don't we. But I'm happy to blip this in my journal. I know there are birdy specialists here who get better shots than this all the time. But for me, at least, this wild barn owl on the wing late in the day is what I call progress. Oh, and I couldn't resist this swan on the way. That was my banker!