Hyde and seek

Yesterday, I met up with some other photographers to photograph the birds in Hyde park. Although lighting was generally rubbish, I was pleased with some of the results. The title is referring to the look for the owls (especially the little owls) which kept themselves quite well hidden and probably would have remained so without help.

We started off at the Long Water. Here we saw a few species of gulls and ducks, including shovelers. Now and then you could see coots sparring, cormorants flying past and great-crested grebes diving but I stuck to the more common species as these were a bit too far away for me.

From there, we moved to an area where we could feed the birds which included parakeets, great tits and of course, pigeons. I tried hard to get a photograph of the parakeets in flight but proved too difficult  for me without a tripod (very stupid mistake not bringing one). I had to settle for the perched birds.

From there we moved on to the little owls. The male and female were in neighbouring trees though proved difficult to find at first. They were both high up but the females eyes staring down at me were hard to miss. 

The tawny owl was next on the list of things to see, which we were shown by a local birder. This is a female looking very snug.

All images © Samuel Aron