Saturday, February 21, 2009

Kensington Gardens Tawny Owl brood

Central London’s famous Tawny Owls in Kensington Gardens have again successfully fledged a brood of three owlets. The early fledging was discovered last week by Des McKenzie and there has since been a steady stream of visitors and interested passers-by cranking their necks for a view of the fluff balls. They were not in the best position for photography today; partially hidden and on the wrong side of the side with respect to the sun. I’ll try again in the following weeks. Hopefully they’ll change position as they begin to stretch their wings. In the first image below I cloned out a couple of twigs that were protruding behind the owlet’s head in a distracting manner. Here are some better photographs of a brood in 2007:
www.frasersimpson-birdphotography.com/tawnyowl.htm

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was nice to meet you the other day. You did well getting these photos as the owls were in a tricky position for photography!

The survey I did with the LBG in Highgate tunnels afterwards went well. We saw 11 bats (Natterers and Daubentons).

Fraser Simpson said...

Hi Alex

Nice to meet you too. Sounds like a successful bat survey in the tunnels - how did you survey them?

A few were active in KG at dusk, not sure which species but they weren't hawking low over the water like Daubenton's. I see there is a cool (and cheap) new detector out that can produce sonograms:

http://www.nhbs.com/batbox_baton_bat_detector_tefno_160684.html

Anonymous said...

We surveyed by walking through the tunnels with torches to count the hibernating bats. One was even flying around in there as it had warmed up quite a bit.

That bat detector looks very interesting. They seem to be making cheaper models these days which should hopefully help more people get into bat detecting.