Barn Owl Hunting During the Day at Steart
There has been a barn owl seen regularly over the last few weeks hunting along the fields by the road to Steart. The near perpetual rainfall may well have made some of its hunting grounds vole-free and it now frequents a landscaped area of earth banks and shallow ponds which has been planted with grasses and wild flowers. This must be a paradise for voles compared with the grazed and often partially flooded fields nearby. The other change for this owl is that it is having to watch for weather windows between downpours so it is out during the day if that's when it's dry. Today it was hunting from 11.50am when the rain started to ease. I took the photographs below in poor light at about 1pm.
Technical note: Poor light essentially means low light in this instance. This means I have to shoot at high ISO - 1600-2000 in this instance - in order to get a high enough shutter speed to freeze the action. Even with the Canon 1D Mark IV noise becomes noticeable in cropped images at this sort of level of ISO. The colour is inherently less pleasing as well when it is dark grey clouds overhead.
