Obsession

If we know each other on Facebook or Instagram you may already have noticed that I went out after owls today, because I posted a selfie of myself at lunch time, wearing so many layers of clothing I looked like the Stay-puft Marshmallow Man, and peering out from under the brim of a hat I only ever wear in extremis. Which it was. It was brilliantly sunny up on the scarp, but freezing: 0°C, with a vicious easterly wind - 12mph, gusting to 20 - that took the temperature down to -5°. If you're thinking, "That's not too bad," just try standing still in those conditions for two hours, waiting for something to happen, while bits of you go through cold, to painful, to numb, and then back to painful again.

HB turned up about an hour after me, and we stood together chatting, watching for owls, and more to the point watching other photographers further along the wall watching for owls, because we were both pretty sure that's the direction they'd come from if they came at all. 3pm arrived, and then 3.30, by which time I'd been standing for two hours and was almost ready to give up. And then, finally, one owl appeared. Which at the end of the day is all you need.

It came from the west as we'd predicted, and meandered slowly along the field towards our corner, but then turned away and headed towards the massed togs on the south wall. "Noooo!" I whiffled. "Come back!" Which it did a couple of minutes later, pausing at the road wall to give a couple of folk there a nice contre-jour view, and then flying straight towards us, fast. By this time I was shaking so badly I could hardly keep the bird in the frame, let alone track it, and in the end I lowered the camera and just watched, laughing out loud, as the shortie glided right over our heads and disappeared down over the quarry. This was one of the last photos I took, and in the circumstances I'm pretty happy with it.

Arrival time: 13.30; first photo: 15.39; last photo: 15.47; photos taken: 236; calling it quits time: 14.03. Why do I do it? Simple: it's an obsession. But thank heavens for hot coffee and heated car seats.