AN UPDATE ON OUR BARN OWLS AND AN OSPREY DUTY.

I am spending most evenings out in my hide monitoring the boxes to see what is happening and that the male is providing sufficient  food for the brood, he at the moment appears to be a very efficient hunter and returns on a regular basis and deposits the spoils of his efforts in the box with the young and female.

I also have the cameras on in the box every two days to try to keep up to date with the hatching, having had the camera on this morning {15th August}. I could only see one egg still to hatch but as to how many Owlets we have, I'm not sure at all. The last time I had an accurate count we had five hatched but this time the female would not get out of the way sufficiently for me to see, she will have to try harder for me. 

I am finding the male is actually coming out of the box earlier but only because the nights are getting darker earlier.

Images taken from the cameras in the small box.

Firstly apologies for the poor quality of the images, we are sill getting a considerable amount of interference but better to see something. 

Awful image but five Owlets are in this shot. what a rate of growth. I was watching whilst the female was feeding the young and the size of the pieces they were swallowing was astounding, comparing them to the Osprey and the female, she was feeding very small bits of fish at this size.

Male Barn Owl leaving the box.

All these images are taken at ISO 102,400 and as the days went by I increased the amount of negative EV up to - 2 for the last images, for my next attempt if it ever stops raining I am going to try -3.
Other than the last two images, all the images were taken on different nights.

ANOTHER OSPREY DUTY, 8th AUGUST.

Its getting to that time of year where the juvenile Ospreys could leave at any time, sad but also satisfying in the fact the adults have managed to rear all four of the young.

I was an duty with a new lady, Julie who was extremely efficient and very knowledgeable on the birds so we had a really good but very busy afternoon with visitors arriving continuously.

The birds were more active than the last duty when it was so hot but even so we did not have much flying about, but the visitors appeared happy enough just to see the birds.  

Adult Female, Waderscrape Hide.

She had been sitting in the poplars farther along the bay, opposite the new Shallow Water hides.

Juveniles in Poplar Tree.

This pair sat in the tree most of the afternoon with 054 {F} to the left and 056 {M} to the right.

Adult Female lands on the nest with 057.

057 had been on the nest for a while, it makes so easy with the large screen in the hide to read the ring numbers.

She then flew onto the camera post leaving 057 picking up the scraps of fish.

Then we had the arrival of two intruder Ospreys, this was on the edge of Manton Bay where it adjoins Heron Bay, a distance of some 580 metres.

33 was immediately into the air from his perch at the other end of the bay and is here bringing up the rear.

The intruders, an adult in the top bird and a juvenile below.

Juvenile intruder on its own.

Juvenile with 33/11 in attendance above.

33 then went into a dive at the youngster but pulled up before hitting the bird.

This was enough for the juvenile who then departed the area and headed for its home nest.

You can just read the ring number 050, not bad for the distance the bird was away from me.

056 to the right and 054 still on the fallen tree, but having changed branches watching 33 remove the intruders.

054 then decides to go and help but also tell 33 its time to catch a fish.
055 was perched in the back of the poplar tree and was impossible to get an image from.

Newly hatched Moorhen, Waderscrape Hide.

This is one of a pair of young that were about in the water to the front of the hide, but either one or the other was always hiding in the reeds.

Second young bird, very late but hopefully will be raised OK by the adults.

Thank you for your visit, I hope you have enjoyed as much as I did in the getting of the images.

Still getting used to the camera.