The long and the short of it

No birding this morning, but in the afternoon I took fellow Newark birder Carl Cornish to see the LEO's that I'd been lucky with yesterday, and we managed to find one of them in more or less the same spot as before.

Continuing with the owl theme, we then visited Cotham Flash, enjoying several encounters with a Short-eared Owl, one perching up on a hay bale allowing some hand-held shots to be taken through Carl's scope. I fetched my own scope and adapter from the car, and no sooner was I set up for a shot than the owl hopped behind the hay bale, whilst the sun came out and washed everything in a beautiful evening light... Carl also picked up a Peregrine here as it flashed through heading east.

Short-eared Owl at Cotham Flash

Giving up on photography, we spent the period up to dusk on Hawton Works Grassland, where three fantastic SEO's (including quite a pale bird) were hunting until we left the site. A nice covey of 19 Grey Partridges were also present, with several others calling from the field to the south. The only thing that marred the atmosphere were three offroad bikes tearing around nearby... But the owls didn't seem to mind too much.