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430 not out – A Scops Owl in Swansea


 

The Scops Owl and I have history!

 

About a year ago I trudged off to my least favourite UK birding location, Kent, and spent a thoroughly miserable evening in a cold dark park dipping one. Kent hates me! It’s a really rotten place to get to from Worcestershire and I’ve dipped most of the rarities I’ve tried for there. Fast forward to last Saturday and another one was found in a similar urban park in Swansea. Given that this is only the second UK December record, the Kent one being the first, I guess its not totally inconceivable that it’s the same bird out to get me again. Paranoid, not me!

 

With lots of other commitments this week the first evening I could go was Thursday. It was still reported on Wednesday night so I headed off to Swansea Thursday afternoon with a plan to get there around 4pm.

 

Now the only way to see an Owl in pitch blackness, apart from looking in the infrared, is to illuminate it. Now its fair to say that this divides opinion amongst birders. Most seem to be OK with it done very sparingly and in a controlled manner but some are  concerned that this disturbs the bird for the sake of human enjoyment and are vehemently  against it.

 

Step forward local birder Mark Hipkin who, via our WhatsApp twitching group, offered to organise birders on Thursday evening suggesting some eminently sensible ground rules. He offered to give  a pre-twitch briefing and then suggested that those with thermal imagers would try to locate the bird. Assuming it was found there would be a torch lit viewing roughly every 15mins for no longer than 30 seconds. We would then retreat to the briefing point in between viewing sessions to give the bird space.

 

The Owl had typically been first seen around 17:30,  so rather than wander around randomly and risk disturbing the Owl we all agreed to stay at the briefing point while those with thermal imagers tried to locate the bird.

 

With no sign by 18:00 it was agreed  that the thermal imagers would split up and try various points in the park where it had been seen. I was starting to fear another miserable dark dip when someone flashed their torch indicating it had been found and we all shot off to one side of the park. When everyone was ready the Owl was briefly illuminated where it was perched low down in a tree and I managed to take a few half decent pics with my 500mm lens with no extender wide open at F4.

 

The Eurasian Scops Owl is a small Owl, being only some 20cm in length, making it somewhat smaller than our own little Owl. Its breeding range extends from southern Europe eastwards to southern Siberia and the western Himalayas. It perches upright and shows small ear-tufts. The plumage is predominantly grey brown in colour, with a paler face, underparts and shoulder line. It is also migratory, wintering in Africa south of the Sahara.

 

It was illuminated briefly once more on a dead trunk before it relocated a short distance. Mike checked that everyone had seen the bird and then suggested that we returned to the briefing spot and let it feed for 30 minutes. 

 

I was starting to get cold so decided this was my cue to leave satisfied that I had beaten the dreaded curse of Kent.

 

 Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!   

 


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