Barn Owl ( Tyto alba )

Clickychick's conference was ending just after lunch so I headed for Harlow Carr gardens.I had a good walk round admiring the spring flowers and particularly the Alpines in the Alpine House.  I had seen enough to be able to pick her up soon after 1:00.  Then we headed back to the caravan.

To fill in the afternoon CC suggested I take her to the reserve I visited yesterday, so off we went.  The first hide we went into had another photographer already there.  In conversation barn Owls came up.  Yesterday I was wondering if my blip owl had lost an eye or it was hidden by the angle.  It turns out "Bullseye" had lost it  possibly in a fight with a Kestrel.  At the time local birders assumed that would be the end of him, killed by either infection or starvation by his hunting ability being compromised.  To their astonishment he has raised two brood of young since the damage.

A second photographer joined us, he was on a mission to photograph and identify as many different Barnies on the reserve as he could, so far the count is 5.He mentioned one pair that regularly hunted a couple of fields near the entrance.  Suddenly he said "Oh one of them is out" and left.  All we could see was a tiny white dot it might have been anything.  Soon after we decided to head back to the van, on the way we passed the two fields, where a number of other photographers had gathered.  The blip is a shot of the owl as it flew past.