A visit to Tuve and the Northern Hawk-Owl

Last winter we had a short visit by a Northern Hawk-Owl at Bohus-Björkö, one of the island in Gothenburg’s northern archipelago. I didn´t find time then to make a visit to the site, but I did found one Northern Hawk-Owl in Skåne during Eastern so I got a couple of decent pictures then.

Gothenburg have been an Owl magnet during my vacation to the other side of the world. A Eurasian Eagle-Owl has been a regular visitor to a park in the middle of the city and a Northern Hawk-Owl seems to have found a good spot in Gothenburg for the winter. This time it seems like the Northern Hawk-Owl actually will stay before migrating back to the north where it breeds which wasn´t the case with the Bohus-Björkö Owl that left after a week.

I had thoughts to go to the site last weekend to see if I could find the Northern Hawk-Owl, but it didn´t happened until today. I know that Saturday would have mean better light, but I had other plans that day which meant I only had two hours today as I had a couple of things I had to do because of a trip that will start next Saturday.

The site was actually easy to find and luckily for me another photographer, Hans Zachrisson, was already there so I didn´t have to search for the Owl.

It was perching high up in a birch. Not the optimal position, but what can you do?

I had brought my monopod as the light was poor due to overcast and one really had to work both the aperture and the speed to try to get the optimal setting.

The pictures I have chosen for this gallery are all more or less the same as the Northern Hawk-Owl stayed at the same place during the 1h30m that I stayed on site. Still I think that all pictures nicely sums up the perching part of an Owls life. Of course it would have been nice with action, but I know that the chance of getting anything that would have work with the light we had where slim.

Still I hope that you will find the gallery of an interest and I would like to thank Hans for the company and for saving me from the possibility to miss the Northern Hawk-Owl completely.