Short-eared Owls - Return visit : 25th November 2023

Last week an old work acquaintance namely Nigel Pullen from Swansea contacted me through Facebook with a friend request that I accepted.

Nigel is an excellent photographer and enjoys the genres of landscape, portraiture and street style photography unlike myself who sticks almost exclusively to wildlife photography.

He does however dabble in some wildlife photography and so we agreed to meet up last Saturday for a trip to see and hopefully photograph the Short-eared Owls at Ginst Point, near Laugharne.

Coincidently Nigel favours the same OM Systems camera system as myself using an OM-1 camera and has an excellent wildlife lens in the 300mm f4 IS Pro prime.

I 'rocked up' at Nigel's home in Morriston at the agreed time of 10.30am and with Nigel offering to drive we were at the owl site by just after mid-day.

We managed to park quite close at the end of the access lane and following a short walk were soon taking up our position in the 'owl field'.

We were greeted by Carl Jones and his partner Emma Woodhouse who had asked me for directions a couple of nights previous and also a couple of other 'toggers' that I didn't know.

There were already 2 or 3 owls hunting when we arrived although distant and in the wrong direction for good light, they did however fly over to 'our' field and gave great although distant views.

Good friend and fellow 'birder/togger' Dave Gilbert turned up after an hour or so, he hadn't been able to make it earlier and Dave's arrival as if by magic resulted in the birds coming closer which allowed for some great photographic opportunities.

We were also joined later in the afternoon by Richard Williams a good friend of Dave's who I have also got to know who had ventured 'over the bridge' from his home in Weston Super Mare.

We all 'filled our boots' for the remainder of the afternoon with at times great light until it rapidly faded and it was time to head for home.

What a fabulous day out in great company, the owls performed superbly which was an added bonus for some of those present including Nigel who had never seen a SEO previously.

We will certainly visit again before the year is out but for the meantime here are a few photos from last Saturday.....