Bog Myrtle & Peat

Driving back from the Scone Game Fair last night, I headed down a little back road through an area of good grouse country a few miles north of the Chayne. It was just beginning to get dark and a single delicate shape cruised down over an area of rough grass below the road. Slowing the car down, I spotted that it was a short eared owl, and as if to emphasise the realisation of that fact, the bird turned and began to cruise up towards me.

By this time, I had slowed the car down to a standstill, and hoping to leap out of the car and take a photo as it cruised by, I turned and reached for the driver’s side door. My hand was on the handle when I spotted two flashes of yellow out of the corner of my eye. They seemed extremely incongruous on a bank of recently dug peat drain, but as I looked, a distinct shape began to form around them. In an instant, I realised that I was looking at an adult short eared owl just ten or twelve feet from the car door.

As we stared at one another, there was a slight movement to the left. A second owl materialised out of the peat, a youngster. I suddenly had the feeling that the whole hillside was alive, and the thought occurred to me that if these two solemn and invisible figures were keeping tabs on me from a few feet away, what else was watching? My girlfriend had the chance to take a few quick snaps before they took off and flew gently up the hill, and I opened the door and stepped out to look at where they had stood.

With an eerie silence, three more young birds emerged from the rushes just feet away, and my paranoid fears of being under surveillance were justified. In the gloom of the early evening, six short eared owls circled for a moment overhead before sinking down into the long grass again a few hundred yards away.

Looking back at the photographs, it’s not hard to see why short eared owls are my favourite birds of prey.