Christine's walking & birds blog

On the beach at Ardmair a few days ago.....


Yesterday I walked up through Altan Wood, flushing two female black grouse from the side of the track. A flock of fieldfare was also present.

A photo on Sussex Ornithological Society's website (sos.org.uk) yesterday cheered me up, because it was of a short-eared owl missing several tail feathers. In July last year, an encounter with an owl during a hill-walk in the Fannichs resulted in a couple of really useless pics - and I wasn't sure if the bird appeared tail-less because of my poor photography, or if it was in the middle of a moult, or even if it was indeed a short-eared owl! The photo on sos gives an idea of how truncated the bird might look if all the tail feathers were gone - as was the case with our bird. At least I can be reasonably sure now that it was a short-eared owl. Now on to the matter of the hill-walking rock pipits!