A weekend with Barn Owls

Anybody guess what it was? No? Well, it was a Barn Owl or Tyto Alba. I am quite impressed really. There are only about 3000 of these in the whole country. I first saw this one as it was flying towards us. At a distance it looked very much like a big bird of pray but as it drew closer you could see the owl like flat face and great broad wings. It swooped back and forward over the meadow searching for food until it stopped in the air and hovered. This was truly impressive. With some powerful beats of its great wings it held perfectly still and silently concentrated on its prey. Then like a stone it dropped down into the long grass for the kill.

Then it started to fly towards us. Do not misunderstand my pictures, I was at the extreme extent of my zoom lens. Even though this bird was a long way off it did spot us easily from this distance and flew away. On the video you can actually see it look at me and then move its head to take into its view the person standing beside me. Remarkable considering that in our eyes it still looked like a distant seagull!

During the weekend I was also able to get the bigascope into the fields and get a closer look at the everyday things that normally just pass us by. I think that the Cow Parsley has nearly finished now, so I will use this last opportunity to delve into the world of the tiny white flower.

My flower book describes Cow Parsley as "Flowers arranged in a double umbel. Involucre lacking. Bracteoles with several broadly lanceolate lobes. Petals to 2mm". In English that means "The flowers are arranged in great number, all held aloft at the end of equal length stems, so as to resemble an umbrella. The flowers do not have a back to them, they are attached directly onto the seed pod. Seed pods are lance shaped." That is great but they do not describe the flower. Each flower has 5 petals up to about 2mm long and heart shaped. What is interesting is that only the middle four or five flowers carry the stamens, whilst the outer flowers in the bunch have no stamens. Maybe this is to stop the plant pollinating itself. The photo above is of the outer "female" flowers. The double ended female stigmas are present on every flower as can be seen in the photo above. These sticky appendages are specially designed to be as long as a bumblebees leg so as to be just at the right length to capture pollen stuck to the bee.

The colours are changing. The fields are starting to redden. What species of wild flower could be causing this? Stay tuned.