Tag: owls

Feathers and Fur

Feathers & Fur
Peregrine

I haven’t taken any bird photos for a while… but today was Paul’s birthday trip, which was a visit to Feathers and Fur, a local falconry centre. It’s a tiny place, inside a garden centre, and a friend had told us about a Groupon offer on their Hands On falconry sessions.

Feathers & Fur
Willow, barn owl

We were incredibly lucky to have the entire two hour session to ourselves, and even though it’s apparently not the right time of year for falconry (the birds should be out hunting and getting fat), everyone behaved beautifully.

Sadie was really friendly and taught us lots of things about the birds, their environment, and how she raises and looks after them. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and we laughed for most of the session. It turns out that watching a barn own swallow his lunch whole is somewhat inelegant, but absolutely hilarious!

Feathers & Fur
Kestrel

I used the 70mm macro lens this time, and I’m really pleased with the photos I managed to take. I went for portraits rather than action pictures (Paul has some gorgeous ones of the owls in flight), and am thrilled with the detail on the image below. The snow made the light a bit weird and I was worried about the photos being over-exposed, so I dropped the ISO down to 400. I think that was a mistake, as some of the images are darker than I’d like, but I definitely had a higher success rate than I have in the past!

Feathers & Fur
Billie Jean, eagle owl

You can see the rest of my photos over on Flickr. If you’re feeling sensitive, one of them’s a bit gruesome (the aforementioned barn owl lunch), but hey, everybody needs to eat.

We’ll definitely be going back and booking another session – probably a dedicated photography one next time. Sadie took some great shots with Paul’s camera, and understands how to position you to get the pictures you want. Although it’s always nice to have the opportunity to have the birds fly to you, so another session like the one we had today would be great.

(Note to self: No, you can’t have a barn owl. Really.)

Bramley the Barn Owl.

Owl, Mapledurham

Yesterday we went to a Live Crafts food & craft fair at Mapledurham House. The highlights of the day for us turned out to be the food fair, and the birds of prey.

Ben Potter had brought along owls, eagles, a kite and a vulture. Sadly we missed most of the actual displays, but Bramley the barn owl was out and about when we came past.

Owl, Mapledurham

I jumped at the chance to hold him, and was genuinely surprised at how small a barn owl is. When you see them on the television, gliding silently over fields at sunset, they give the impression of being absolutely enormous. But you can see from the picture here that he’s actually quite a delicate little thing – especially compared to Oska the eagle owl who was also in the display.

The Hawk Conservancy Trust, who are only about an hour away from us, offer a really interesting range of courses. We’d looked originally for photography-based days, but we’re now extremely tempted by the Training Birds of Prey weekend.

Depending on how quickly I recover from my hip operation (I don’t think I can negotiate walking on crutches and holding a hawk!), we’d definitely like to book ourselves in for some kind of time spent with birds of prey in the not-too-distant future.

O W L hugs…

Sirdar Hug

I popped into town the other day, and while I was waiting for a bus I decided to nip into Jacksons. I’m glad I did, because they just happened to have a great big basket of Sirdar Hug for just £1.20 a ball! This means that for just £14.40, I now have enough wool to knit a whole jumper, and I’m thinking of O W L S.

So, I went and looked at the pattern on Ravelry, and looked at all the different O W L S that other people have knitted and, having coveted the pattern ever since I first saw it, I came to a difficult conclusion.

I do want owls, but I don’t want O W L S.

I’d like my jumper to be longer, but I don’t know how far the yarn will go, so I’d like to knit something from the top down rather than from the bottom up. I don’t really like knitting in the round – the constant knitting without the variation of the purl rows makes my wrists ache. I think that big jumpers need seams to give them a certain amount of structural integrity, especially at the shoulders, to stop them from stretching and twisting all over the place. (I don’t know whether that’s actually true, or whether I just think that way because I’m a dressmaker, where everything has seams.) Also, I might need to do a bit of swatching. The yarn band recommends using 8mm needles, but it looks much better for 6½s to me.

If a swatch on 6½mm needles comes out with a nice fabric that isn’t too stiff, I might take the easy option and replicate my favourite pirate jumper, (here’s a non-Ravelry link) only with owls instead of skulls.

I’ll knit the front and back from the armscye to the neck from the bottom up, incorporating a purl ridge for the row of owls to sit on. Then, once I’ve knitted the sleeves, I can divide the remaining yarn into two, pick up the stitches, and knit downwards until the jumper is as long as the yarn will allow. The purl ridge will neatly disguise the join. I might even add a bit of a chunky leaf lace motif to the sleeves and hem, inspired by Teva Durham’s Lace Leaf Pullover. Although I sold the book with that pattern in it because I didn’t get on with wrangling such heavily process-driven knitting. Still, I’m sure I can make something up.

Hang on… didn’t I just say somewhere that this would be the “easy” option?

Hmm.

Encounter With Owls…

Eagle Owl

I’m just dropping in for a flying visit to upload the photos from the first part of our honeymoon – you can see them all here.

Yesterday we had a Falconry session in the morning, and an Encounter With Owls in the afternoon. This enormous chap was featured in both. His name’s Woolly, and he’s an Eagle Owl.

We also met a Merlin called Angel, a Gyr/Peregrine Falcon called Romeo, a Harris Hawk called Miller, and lots and lots of owls.

I have to confess that I am a huge fan of birds in general, and birds of prey in particular, so getting to spend a couple of hours getting to feed them and fly them to the glove was absolutely amazing.

You can tell how much I enjoyed it by my enormous grin – that’s Woolly on my arm. I’m leaning slightly away from him because I’d already learnt the hard way that his wings were long enough to hit me in the face!

I don’t know of anywhere local that rescues or rehabilitates birds, but I might have to do a bit of research when I get home. It would be brilliant to be able to have contact with birds like this more often.