Trip to Holland

As the Hawk owl was still present after our return from India we decided, with PB to make the trip on Wednesday, which looked like the best for weather. We looked at times and due to various commitments the earliest train over I could make was 11.15pm on Tuesday, followed by a two hour drive before I had to stop for some sleep in a service area.
Waking up around 6 we managed a cup of tea before driving on to Zwolle. The day dawned bright and sunny until we left the motorway when it became misty, for the rest of the day!
We found the owl site and were soon watching it on top of a pylon in the mist.


A bit of patience and it flew closer onto the substation poles. It was really alert, searching round. At one point it flew down and caught a probable beetle in the grass. The owl spent some time flying to different posts, including flying down the fence line to a post about 10 feet away, completely unconcerned by the 10 or so photographers pointing cameras. It was almost too close for the lens!









The owl then flew across the road into the park before returning to the trees and lamp posts along the road.






It eventually flew further down the road and we decided to go and look for a Pygmy Owl in a wood a little way away. We put the coordinates into the sat nav but there was problem as it did not take us to the right area. However, following directions from Dutch Birding we eventually found the right place only to be told it had flown about an hour before after a photographer had tried to get too close.
There was a very interesting difference in the 2 groups. At the hawk owl, which has been around a while, it was mainly photographers with only 3 pairs of binoculars and 1 telescope in sight but at the Pygmy owl it was all birders.
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