Last week Mrs O and I spent another week in Southwold. We like to go when the grockles are not there and even though we are visitors, I don’t class ourselves as grockles as we live in the county and this is just another of our many resorts.
I had hoped to photograph the cliffs at Easton Bevants to see how things had changed 12 months on from our last sojourn. Alas, the beach had dropped to the extent that my 61 year old frame could not manage the scramble down the weed covered rock defences just north of the pier. I turned my sights south to Walberswick instead, but distractions got in the way in the form of the Short Eared Owls, and of course the weather, and what weather it was indeed.
Looking out of the backyard of the shed we had rented, a big shed and very nicely appointed, on our first evening, I mentioned the fact that two owls entertained us. Well, I have had a bit of a habit for forgetting things going on holiday. One year it was my underpants. That saw me me scurrying into Norwich from the Broads to stock up on spare shreddies for the week. This year it was my Compact Flash drive card reader so on the Sunday morning I got up really early and it was grim, a grey cold grim, the type of which that can only occur on the East Coast and I drove back into Ipswich to collect it. The Owls had not been on my agenda as I was equipped for landscape and seascape work so I collected the 200-400 lens and was I glad I had forgotten the card reader. I was OK for underpants this time. I was back in Southwold for 0800.
All wildlife is notoriously unreliable when it comes to photographing it, and it requires hours of observation and understanding of the species to get decent images. I’ve done Barn Owls and of course Kingfishers in the past but Short Eared Owls were new to me. I quickly learned that they were both diurnal and nocturnal hunters but the weather, did I mention the weather, really got in the way. One afternoon, I spent 4 hours in a ditch sheltering on the lee side of a dyke from snow, hail and fierce winds and not one owl showed up. I did stumble across loads of dog shite though, all bagged and apparently slung over the dyke by careful dog owners. I prayed that no fresh stuff would land on me as I lay prone waiting for the owls that never turned up.
Anyway they did turn up on other days and it was a test for me as the nearest I was to their quartering was 175 yards and the limit was about 700 yards. It tested me and the equipment for acquiring and keeping focus on these fickle fast flyers. Shutter speeds and ISO were cranked up and coupled with the distances resulted in mediocre results. Anyway here are a few.
This was about 600 yards away.
The wind turbines are at Eye, some 37 Km away.
And then the Amish came or at least in my mind, I would not have been surprised if some Amish had not ridden a buggy into the near ground (the internet had died on me by that time anyway so Amish would have been apt) as the back of a front hurtled towards the window cleaners doing the windows on the shed. Mrs O was out buying provender and was caught by the snow that this lot delivered.
The light area is over Blythburgh Church
Later on Friday I drove into Halesworth for the first exhibition of the Photoeast festival. It was good to meet Bill Jackson and Eamonn McCabe who were exhibiting here but the surprise for me was that Stephen Wolfenden’s images of Liverpool in 1971 could have fitted into my Liverpool Echo series from 1972.
I scuttled back to the shed to quaff champagne and marvel at the sunset with Mrs O before showing her the wonderment of the firmament from the roof terrace.
We had some very unseasonable weather (it was dear reader equally bad 37 years ago. It dumped snow on us at Versailles) and yesterday morning was the most delightful of our week as we packed up ready for the hordes of BH grockles to arrive. Southwold was even erecting porta-dunnies ready for the crowds as I packed the car.
I am glad we left before queues began to form.
I’ll have to get some more practice in with these owls before the next sojourn.