Irresistible

I wasn't going to go - I really wasn't - but the light was good, and the forecast was reasonable... and in the end the siren call of the Cotswold owls was too strong, and I went. The lane was packed, of course, but I found a dryish parking space fairly easily, and was soon wandering up and down the wall, happily chatting to people I hadn't seen for five years as if we'd last met a couple of days ago.

The only problem was that for the next two and a half hours the owls stayed down in the grass - not that you could blame them really, because there was a vicious north-easterly wind blowing across the scarp, and even at the sunniest and warmest point of the afternoon it was only about 3°C - and as time went on we all began to wonder if they were going to come out to play at all. "Oh, they'll come out," said the local expert cheerfully. "The only question is whether you'll still be here." He said that on some days recently they haven't flown until well after sunset, and reckoned that they'd fed so well over the past couple of days and nights that this might turn out to be one of those days.

In the event though it wasn't. The first bird went up at about 3pm, rapidly followed by a second, and for the next twenty five minutes we enjoyed steady if not spectacular action. At one point four owls were seen sitting at intervals along the cross wall, while another overflew them. None of the action happened as close to my position as I'd have liked, but there's always a huge element of luck about these things: moving to a different spot might have got me better photos, but it might just as easily have meant that I got none at all. I've chosen this shot of one of the paler birds tipping into a dive because it's such an exciting moment (especially if you're a field vole), but there are half a dozen other images in my Facebook post, if you'd like to see them.