Owls again

Two Short-eared Owls remain in the Tavira area and it will be no surprise that we've been out there watching them again and trying to get some better photographs.

They're being given a hard time by the local Lesser Black-backed Gulls and maybe that's why they seem to leave it quite late in the afternoon before starting to hunt.

No matter how good your camera and lens, sometimes you need a bit of luck and we certainly had that on Sunday. We had been watching one of the owls from quite some distance away and it showed no sign of wanting to come close. We decided that if the owl wouldn't come to us, then we had to move and try and get nearer to it.

As we did so, we found out why it was that so far that afternoon we had been watching only one of the two owls seen previously. It seems that not all Short-eared Owls wake up and go hunting at the same time. Purely by chance, we happened upon the second bird sitting on a bank, looking like its alarm had just gone off! It was remarkably approachable and seemed happy to stare back at us before eventually flying off quite lazily and finding another resting place only a short distance away.


And Short-eareds weren't the only owls in the neighbourhood. While we watched them, we in turn were being watched by this Little Owl.

Short-eared Owls

Short-eared Owls are among our favourite birds and for several weeks we have been looking enviously at reports and photographs of them from further north in Portugal and also from back home in Staffordshire.


They are birds not seen much in the Eastern Algarve so we were delighted to find one here in Tavira on New Year's Day. It was seen quite late in the day and in pretty poor light but it was only a five-minute drive away so, not surprisingly, we have been back several times during the past week for a better look.


We have now found that there are two birds in the area and as well as seeing them hunting over the saltpans we have watched them chasing each other and tangling in mid-air, presumably each defending a feeding territory.


Photographing them has proved difficult but today we managed to get a few reasonable images and no doubt we'll be trying for better ones in the next few days if the birds stay around.