R and I were on our way home from Stratford at lunch time today, and were heading out of Long Marston towards Pebworth, when a smallish speckled bird flew across the road in front of the car. Raptor?? I thought, just as R said, “What was that?” As we crossed the bird’s flight path I glanced to my right, just in time to see it landing on a marker post, and now unmistakeable. “Little Owl!” I said, slowing the car and pulling in about fifty metres further down the road. R now had no view, but I could see the Owl quite clearly in my mirrors, still sitting on the post and gazing after us. Long experience tells me that if the camera is in the boot – which it was – there’s really no point in stopping the car and getting out to fetch it, because whatever fascinating thing you’ve seen will not tolerate this usual divergence from its idea of acceptable human behaviour. But. “Are you going for it?” said R. “Got to,” I replied. “Though there’s no chance it’ll stay.”
I opened the car door very slowly, and slithered out, trying to watch the Owl without making direct eye contact, then edged round to the back of the car. The car is white and the boot is electric, and it swings up with a loud hydraulic noise like the yawning of a huge white mouth. Issuing silent curses, I risked a quick glance over my shoulder, and found I was still being closely observed from the post. I slid the camera out of its case, turned very slowly, lifted it, and shot a quick burst of frames – and still the Little Owl stayed where it was.
It gave me a full minute before deciding that enough was enough and flying back into the field from which it had originally come, and during that time it offered a variety of poses: gazing sideways directly at me, glowering upwards from underneath its brows, looking straight forwards, and looking back over its shoulder into the field behind. R especially likes the smouldering owl scowl, but I love all of them, and I’ve struggled to reduce sixty frames to a keepable eight images. They may not be technically the best photos I’ve ever taken of an owl, but they certainly count as the luckiest.
R: L2, C9, D15.
