Short-eared Owls at Rippon Tor

Had a fantastic walk yesterday afternoon around Halshanger Common and Rippon Tor in hazy winter sunshine.  Something in the light hinted that it would be a good area to stop and look for birds of prey, with the sun behind me, on my way to pick up my son Joe from school.  My hunch was rewarded with good, if fairly distant, views of two Short-eared Owls aloft over Horridge Common and the slopes of Rippon Tor.  One was calling to the other in the strange yelp that they have, and there was a brief tussle high in the air before they both drifted on incredibly buoyant wings south west towards Buckland Common.  


This was a real treat, as I haven't seen these birds on Dartmoor since February 1999, when I watched two hunting on Skir Hill in a blizzard.  They do occur more frequently than that, with usually two or three records a year on Dartmoor, but you need to be lucky as they cover large distances and are present in very small numbers, if at all.  This has been a good winter for Short-eared Owls on Dartmoor, with this at least the fifth record so far (the others were seen in widely flung areas on the south, west and north east flanks of the moor).  It's possible that all the records relate to the same birds, as they wander so widely in search of rodent prey (mainly voles).


They are unusual among owls in that they habitually hunt by day, quartering open grassy country rather like a harrier.  The yellowy-orange wing patches that you can see on the photo below were very noticeable on the birds that I saw yesterday as the sun caught them.

[I should add that I did not take this photo - I found it (uncredited) on an American site]