This particular image was the culmination of two weeks chasing it – when I say it was two weeks chasing it I mean the image not the owl!

The birds is a local owl and we had a rough idea as to where it had a nest – note Barn Owls are scheduled bird meaning it’s illegal to intentionally or recklessly disturb them…in fact whether a bird is scheduled or not it’s always good practice to have as little interaction / disturbance caused to it as possible. Anyway now I’ve made that point back to the story…

I’d been told about the owl and mentioned it to a good friend of mine, Catherine, so with her at one end of the meadow and me at another part we felt that we could work out flight paths etc.

We had a rough idea where the bird was nesting and was also aware of where one of the meadows were that it hunted over – it had been in the area for many years – the locals loved to see it as they walked their dogs through the meadow, so we knew if we kept our distance the disturbance that we would cause would be kept to an absolute minimum.

I’d managed a few decent shots, for me, over the two weeks, but as a photographer you always want better, my two weeks started with just capturing a few reference shots which then progressed to decent bird in flight shots but I knew I wanted either a diving shot or one where the bird is looking across at me.

Finally after two weeks we felt that we had learnt the flight paths that it was taking and then returning back to the nest so I positioned myself across from this and sat on the tarmac paths that passed through the site and waited. It wasn’t long before the bird came down a completely different path, flying straight over my head maybe 6 ft above me, it arched at the bottom corner of the meadow before it began quartering the meadow.

I was cursing my luck with the side of the meadow that I’d picked, the grass was just too high without me standing up and potential disturbing the hunting owl.

Luckily after watching the bird quarter part of the meadow it changed direction and stopped before dropping into the grass, swearing quietly as I thought I’d missed a shot, I slow edged down the path to get to an area where I could at least remain sat on the path and be able to potentially capture a shot.

The bird lifted and it continued going straight along the bottom of the meadow, having missed it’s prey! My heart beat faster as it came up the back edge of the meadow and then turned to go back down the same edge. I managed to lift the camera just as it stopped and dove into the grass once more.

Swearing quietly under my breath once more at having missed another shot, I kept the camera held up and saw as the bird lifted with the vole that you see in the picture in it’s feet.

I tracked the bird whispering “come on turn and look, turn and look at me”, it felt like an eternity as I tracked it and then it turned and looked straight at the camera, I fired off a few shots, the bird then turned and continued on it’s flight back to it’s nest site.

As I pressed the replay button on my camera I held my breath wondering if I had caught the image of it looking back at me or not…the first image replayed the wing was slightly blurred and the head pointing forward, the second the wings were perfect but the head was in between looking at me and forward I quickly pressed to the next image and the next all similar the head just not right. Finally as was just about to give up reviewing the images the one above came to screen and then another and another – you have just got to love the Olympus camera being so small and handholdable even with big lenses couple this to high speed capture and all I can say is this is my best image that I have taken.