Sometimes it's easy

Looking out of my bedroom window first thing in the morning, I was aware of something light showing up quite vividly in the early morning sun in the hedge on the other side of the meadow. I was pretty sure I knew what it was, and getting the binoculars confirmed it. It was a Little Owl.

I often see them out and about along the hedge during the day, but now with the leaves starting to die back, they were a bit more obvious. It just so happened that where this particular Little Owl had taken to siting in the morning sun, there was a Willow Tree that had come down a few weeks earlier in the winds. This made a perfect place to set up a hide.

So later that afternoon, I took my hide and some camouflage netting across to the fallen tree. I would have to make a really good job concealing myself as the Owl would hopefully be siting within twenty feet of me. Once the hide was in place, I just had to remove a couple of small branches off of the Elder Bush the Owl normally sits in as they would have been in a direct line with my camera lense. Now all was ready.

The following morning found me up bright and early well before dawn. Breakfast finished, I was out the front door and seated in my hide within two minutes. I was less than one hundred metres from my house! Now it was just a waiting game to see if the Little Owl would turn up in the same place as the previous morning. It was now getting light fairly quickly when I was aware of a slight noise to my left.

Cautiously I turned to my left and looked out of a pophole in the hide. There it was. A Little Owl trying to pierce a hole in the side of the hide with its bright yellow eyes! Now I was in a bit of a dilemma! It was aware that something wasn't quite right but was it aware of my presence? And another major problem was that my camera was pointing the wrong way! For about ten minutes I just stared at the Owl not daring to move a muscle, and it seemed like it was staring right into my eyes!

I could see though that it was slowly starting to relax. So for about the next ten or fifteen minutes I started to very slowly move the camera around and into posistion. I had had the forethought to cut off a couple of branches from the fallen Willow just in case the Owl did come to sit on that side as it looked quite a good siting posistion for when the sun came up. And now I was very glad I did, as once in posistion I was to spend the next hour and a half not only taking pictures but watching the Little Owl less than twenty feet away!

When the sun came up it produced some lovely autumn colours and I could not have hoped for a better morning. Eventually the Little Owl disappeared further into the hedge to hide away and with that I was able to slip out of the hide and head the short distance back home. That is the challenge I enjoy with wildlife photography. You just never know wether it is going to be easy or hard. But with a little fieldcraft and knowledge and a lot of luck, sometimes it's easy. At least, until the next time!!!