Barn Owl #25

With a dry day in prospect, we headed over to Martin Mere for the day hoping to add to this years list. We had 4 potential newbies to find, but only managed 2 - Cattle Egret and Ruff. We dipped on the brambling and Willow Tit, but I'm sure I'll have other opportunities to find them. 
Despite some really nice sightings - kingfisher, water rail, buzzards, kestrel, woodpecker - it was all about the Barn Owls today. 

The first one was just sitting on a post from the kingfisher hide when we arrived after lunch. It had a couple of attempts at hunting and eventually came up trumps (extras). It then headed off to another fence post and then it was joined by another one. The first one decided he didn't like the competition and gave us a nice fly by on his way around the corner.
We waited for the second one to do something other than sit on a post obscured by lots of branches for quite some time and then gave up and went to the next hide where we found another bird (or maybe the first one) hunting on the fields there. How lucky are we? :))
As the centre closes at 4.30pm, we all had to leave before we wanted to!! 
But it was a wonderful day in some glorious weather.