OWLS IN FLIGHT | A day at the British Wildlife Centre

It was Christmas 2019 when I received as a present an Owl Photography Day at the British Wildlife Centre. I was hoping to attend month or so later but Covid 19 had other plans for us all through most of 2020.

Eventually all good things come to those who wait! Last week I finally headed off to Lingfield for my day with the owls. We had a superb morning photographing owls in the bluebells and an afternoon doing owl portraits among the open fields.

But the high spot of the day for me was the chance to (perhaps) photograph an owl in flight. Nothing in life is guaranteed (except death and taxes) and so it is with owls. The don’t fly in rain or in windy conditions, they also don’t fly if they don’t want to. Thankfully the weather gods had blessed us with a little weather window after days of high winds and rain, so we were at least in with a chance.

Preparations were made for take off. Kevin the Barn Owl went down to one end of the field with Keeper 1; Keeper 2 waited with ten photographers, lined up on the bank with telephoto lenses poised and bated breath. Keeper 2 called Kevin and brandished inducements, Keeper 1 lifted him aloft. Nothing happened. Those big telephoto lenses began to feel very heavy as we waited, and waited, and waited…

Kevin shifted his weight from one foot to the other. This was surely the moment! In my excitement, I noisily fired off a burst of shots at 14 frames a second. But Kevin remained perched on Keeper 1.

We waited some more.

Then, suddenly, it was happening, Kevin was airborne and heading our way. Remember those coin-operated telescopes at the seaside? imagine trying to train one on a seagull in flight and you’ll have a good idea of what it was like as I flailed around a massively long telephoto lens with not a clue where Kevin was or was headed.

I missed Kevin’s second flight entirely – I’d lowered my lens to my knees for a brief moment to take the strain off my arms…

Kevin graced us with two further flights. I doubted I’d got any shots at all worth keeping. But Kevin had done us proud, I expect others in our party got some nice images and it was a lovely day. I learned a lot.

When I got home, I discovered something very strange. Not only were some of those flight pictures actually in focus but my camera had produced two identical sets of images of Kevin in flight. At first I thought it was a glitch and that they were duplicates of the same set of shots. It was only when I looked at them more closely I realised that they were in fact captures from two separate flights, that Kevin had gone through almost exactly the same set of movements on each flight and my camera had captured him at the exact same point on each flight. How strange and wonderful is that?! Below, left is flight 3 and right is flight 4.

I am grateful to the staff at British Wildlife Centre for a wonderful day; to my fellow photographers for their company and good manners; to the owls themselves for being such patient, beautiful, inscrutable subjects; and above all to Kevin for giving me not just one but four chances to photograph a barn owl in flight.