The last few weeks have been remarkable at
Parkgate on the
Wirral, but somehow I had managed to miss out much of the action until today. The
Owl-fest started around the time of the high tide when up to six
Short-eared Owls had been reported, and then on sunny days over the next week some remarkable photos started appearing on social media. Unfortunately, I was either working or had made other arrangements on the days with the best weather, and so I sat and seethed in front of my computer praying for another opportunity - today was going to be my best chance.
I'd been out on Monday of the previous week and I got some decent shots, but not the ones I really wanted. So this morning I set off quite early hoping to get some of the Owls hunting first thing, but traffic delays meant that I didn't arrive until around 8am and, worse still, it was very windy. However the sun was shining and so I held out hope for the winds quietening down in the afternoon, which indeed they did. I parked at the Old Baths car park and set off along the coast towards the golf course with just my binoculars in search of Owls.
There were other bird photographers about including
Paul Bennett who had ensconced himself on the saltmarsh up against the old harbour wall in the hope of an Owl landing on a stump eating a lizard right in front of him, - some chance of that happening twice as
Neil McMurran had already won that race!
Later I met up with
Kevin Evans-Jones and we chatted away putting the world to rights whilst patrolling the area from the car park to the golf course. I even eventually got my camera bag out but it was just too windy for any birds to appear all morning and so not a shot was fired. I did have a fleeting view of a Ringtail Hen Harrier flying away from me at one point.
But in truth, very little else happened until mid-afternoon and after Kevin left I went back to my car for some lunch - I even had a short snooze to give my watery eyes a rest from the fierce breeze. I broke out the camera gear properly and began Owl-watching in earnest at around 1:30pm. Apart from a lone Kestrel, the first raptor sightings occurred at 2:20pm with a
Short-eared Owl hunting in front of the car park and they didn't really ever stop for long until 5:30pm, by which time it was getting quite dark.
There were at least four
Short-eared Owls hunting from the Old Baths car park to the promenade with one or two close passes at times. But probably the star of the show today was a
Barn Owl which surprisingly appeared at around 3:30pm and came pretty close - I don't think I've ever seen one here before and certainly not that early.
It gave us some great views as it quartered the marsh from the car park to the promenade and at one point was involved in a bit of a spat with one of the
Short-eared Owls. Just handbags really, with nothing but a bit of talon-posing until they both flew off.
For the last part of the day I drove down to the promenade where one of the birds has been regularly seen perching on some driftwood branches out on the marsh. I could see that lots of people had gathered there and were looking out at the marsh. Would this be the day to get the elusive perched shot?
Well, not from here, but two birds were flying incredibly close to the sea wall a little further along the promenade so walked towards them a got a shot of one bird on the ground - it's the closest I've got to the perched shot that I so desire.
During the course of the day, I met up with some old birding friends including
Jeff Cohen,
Meurig Garbutt,
Mike Nesbitt, Paul Miller and
James Arnold and gained a new one called
Nikki Mays, so another great day birding on the Wirral. One guy called
Guido even asked me to email him some shots of the
Short-eared versus Barn Owl confrontation - so I did.
Will I be going back again for that close perched shot which is still eluding me - probably!
Here's an experimental link to a video slideshow with music that I've put on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/GeekTeacher.Birding/videos/320937278562730/
