Had to go to Quorn to pick up some gig tickets in the afternoon, so decided to have a look round locally for potential owl sites. I soon spotted a likely looking tree for Little Owls down the drive to a farm near Seagrave. I met the farmer's wife, part way down the drive, who readily gave permission for me to have a look round. It had been two weeks since they had seen Little Owls in the tree that I had spotted, but they had been on holiday in the interim, so weren't up-to-date. Unfortunately they'd had to severely prune the tree in question, and on examination it looked very recently dismembered, and I suspect that there was now nowhere for the LOs to to be, although the trunk was covered with ivy. They mentioned that Barn Owl was often seen, and possibly nesting in a disused barn that they pointed out, also Tawny were sometimes heard locally. Most interesting however, was that six Long-eared Owls had been there for a while - probably four years ago. Having looked for signs of LO in the tree, I decided to take a wander round the farm. Little was seen except a very distant flock of Lapwing, a somewhat closer flock of probably more than five hundred Fieldfare, and a few Hares (plus one rabbit). I sat it out until after just after dark - but no owls were seen or heard, and as I was getting rather cold, I called it a day!

Hi Richard
ReplyDeleteI have followed the instructions to add the map to our blog and it has worked a treat, but how do I update it? It has the countries I highlighted before pasteing, but I can't add the couple I forgot.
Hope you can help. Thanks Sue
Hi Sue. As far as I am aware, the only way to update the map is to go back into the original web site and re-state the countries. I can't remember if it somehow retains the countries that you've already nominated - it's a little while since I did this. I don't travel much these days - sad really when I used to be abroad maybe up to twenty times a year (I used to have my own tour company)!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Richard, I thought that was the case.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you should think about leading a few tours abroad again, we would be interested.
Hope the cat's getting better.
Sue
Thank you Sue. It seems that he is totally out of the woods now - just needs to put some weight back on again. After five days of not eating and running a very high temperature he ended up as a dehydrated bag of bones.
ReplyDeleteI don't think my type of tour would have been of interest to you - I used to run rail tours for railway enthusiasts!!! It's possible that I will be helping a Hungarian organisation with a tour later this year - but that will be a very "technical" rail tour.