In May 2010 I went to southern Sweden with Richard Campey. Through his contacts, he had managed to arrange for us to see a couple of special owl species, Ural and Great Grey Owls.
We travelled through the forests of southern Sweden, coming across the occcasional Elk (or Moose, as the Americans call them):
We had been directed to a clearing where a pair of Great Grey Owl were regularly feeding. Our first scan of the clearing had Richard swearing with joy: a huge adult Great Grey Owl was perched on a distant fence post:
Gradually we watched as it worked its way from post to post.
Richard and I simply sat by the road and enjoyed one of the world’s great birds:
The owl made frequent kills, dropping onto voles in the long grass:
Sometimes the owl used perches away from the fence line, including trees…
… and on one occasion, a rock:
But the fence provided it’s favourite hunting perches. Before long, it was perched right in front of us, providing superb views, whilst all the time looking like a rather disapproving school master:
It was not that this Great Grey Owl was tame. It was simply not interested in anything that was not vole.
As the light faded, it was almost as if the Great Grey Owl was posing for portraits in front of us:
Dusk saw one of the most spectacular purple sunsets I have ever seen:
Although owls were our main target, we enjoyed some of the other wildlife southern Sweden has to offer, including Beaver:
and Pied Flycatchers:
The next day saw us join a Swedish owl ringing group. We visited a number of Ural Owl boxes, where the ringers extracted the owlets, placed a ring on their leg, and then put them back in the boxes. Ural Owls have a fearsome reputation as defenders of their young. Some adult Ural Owls left the owl box as the ringers approached…
… whilst others stayed in the box. These birds were also extracted and rung, before being released. Note the bleeding wounds this owl has inflicted on the arm of this man as he extracted it from the owl box:
The protection the ringers had to wear to go near a Ural Owl box was remarkable. The person climbing up to the box wore a motorcycle helmet, visor and gaunlets as protection. He also required the assistance of a man with a “large pillow on a stick”, which is used to bat away attacks from the adult owls. I tried to capture the scene in this video (now 10 years old, so don’t expect HD quality):
However, Ural Owls are intelligent hunters. One adult owl turned its attention to the man who was holding the “owl-bat-pillow-on-a-stick”. Here he is after their altercation, just about to drive himself to hospital with a lcacerated scalp:
But, it was not the blood of Swedish owl ringers that stayed with me from our trip to southern Sweden. Rather, the simply magnificent large owls that Richard and I were fortunate to experience:
