The short-eared owls

The short-eared owls 11th February 2012 Features Index
The owls have caused quite a stir. These short-eared jobs are considerate enough to hunt in daylight so birders have been there with their long lenses. Carolyn Alexander (ca) is a regular with Merlin. She encountered John Brackenbury (jb) and Kip Loades (kl) who emailed a picture each to her for the collection. Shelagh Bidwell (sb) squeezed walks into her schedule and took the pictures which are also featured on the cover of Tail Corn. I spotted two of Gary Thornton's (gt) pictures on the Cambridgeshire Bird Club site and he kindly sent his along.
Gary (of Fowlmere) writes
''I found out about the short-eared owls through the Cambridgeshire Bird Club. There has been a large influx of the birds from Scandinavia this winter. Apparently they had a good breeding season last year because of the abundance of lemmings, a favourite food for them.
After trying to capture some decent photos at Burwell Fen unsuccessfully, I heard that there were some at Great Eversden. They are very photogenic birds, and certainly the owls at Great Eversden were far more obliging than the ones at Burwell!!
To begin with I was a little worried about the site because of the easy access for walkers, which I was concerned would disturb their hunting site that they rely on to survive the winter, but the owls seemed to be less sensitive than I expected.''

Thanks to all contributors. (DF)