Blessed by the Birds Gods

Well, the Bird Gods obviously weren’t quite sure what they thought of me yesterday and took a long time deliberating before finally giving me their blessing. And what a blessing it was. If anything they ended up over doing it so I must have used up all credit and now be in debt to them.

Whilst they were still deliberating in the morning we failed to find a GGO despite nearly three hours of searching. We then went to look for Grosbeaks and at this point the Gods teased me. We were rewarded with great views of the Grozzas for about three minutes before they and nearby Waxwings and Fieldfares were spooked and flew off. After this both Dave and Mark fell on the ice, we had the birds fly over us but not land and then a Sparrowhawk really spooked them seemingly for good. The Gods had clearly abandoned me and we retreated to the car to return to look for the owl. We stood by the car for a bit of food and drink and at this point the Gods looked down and clearly felt I had passed their test and was now worthy. I spotted a Grosbeak a couple of hundred metres away feeding on rowan berries and we made our way there. Three birds showed really well at very close range, memory cards were filled and things started feeling good. Deciding we really did need to go looking for the owl again we took a longer but safer path back to the car (the ice was treacherous) and passed the area where we had first seen the Grozzas two hours earlier and what do you know there were 10 birds back in glorious sunshine. More images were digitally recorded but we couldn’t stay long.

Driving back to look for the owl I really felt that things were going my way although I don’t think Dave and Mark were so optimistic. I decided our best bet was to stake out one of my news areas for the owl and after a half hours wait it finally showed!! Bingo and praise to the Gods 😊 It was initially moving about a bit too quickly and we lost it. Despite carefully looking for it we couldn’t find it but just as we all stood shoulder to shoulder and wondered where to do next I noticed something 5 metres above us in the next tree! I didn’t dare speak and just tapped a shoulder and pointed but could tell Dave and Mark were looking too far away but after what seemed like an age (probably just a couple of seconds) they adjusted their focus to macro and OMG the Gods clearly loved me. We were then treated to over half an hour of awesome GGO action and there were three very happy Englishmen who watched the sun setting, the moon rising and the owl hunting in silhouette.

I think I will be permitted to show a few more pics of my (current) two favourite species.