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Went owling again. One of its dives was about 20 feet away and I heard the thwunk of owl hitting vegetation. It then flew within 10 feet of me, apparently unaware of my presence.

Indeed - and part of the reason for these photos being so grainy and blotchy is that I was cranking the gain up to 12800 ISO. The blackbirds did overlap with the owl, and I saw a mouse in the grass shortly before owl appeared.

Another friday afternoon, bunked off work early and met a owl again. It screeched at me, which is the first time I have heard a owl of this sort say anything. Why does it get dark when the owls appear? Are the owls not what they seem?

But…. but… 80k…. Normal? Mad.

My photos are hand-held. Last night I was getting some clobber ready to take out for a pre-work ramble and did try out what it would feel like on a monopod (using one leg of a fairly heavy tripod I bought for astronomy). Interesting to see how much easier it makes things, so I might try it in earnest one day. But extra clobber to carry, and no way am I getting camo gear.

In fact I am still leaning towards switching to lighter gear with image stabilisation. Didn’t go out as I am too tired and it is too windy.

^yes, if I could justify it, that would probably be my choice. Might see if MPB can do a G9 and Leica 100-400 that I could just about explain away.

I was looking at an Olympus four thirds camera today - I had intended to look at a Panasonic G9 but the chap in the shop steered me towards the Olympus partly because of the phase detect AF. Their longer lenses seem excellent too. But the Olympus stuff is just a bit too pricy for my needs. Hmmm.

A owl is always a fine thing to see. I have seen a barn owl three days running, that’s probably why I dreamt last night that I saw two of them in Kennington.

A pleasure - i am glad that most people who look at my photos are doing so on tiny screens that hide the poor focus, camera shake, noise etc!

Thanks - it put on a good show for us, but then insisted on sitting behind a stick!

Mrs Ludd wanted to see an otter this morning so we tried Otmoor. Alas no otters in the short time we were there, but thousands of lapwings and golden plovers, a kingfisher, some Cetti’s warblers, bullfinches, snipe, little egrets and stuff

^what a lovely new toy!

Back again at 4.30 today

Belated posting, here is some rough footage of Mars setting behind the moon
https://1drv.ms/v/s!AsopeJT-rgkngv06cOL-HlF11WZgRA

It's been nearly a year since I last saw one of these in the tractor field. It was pretty dark so it's more moody album covers rather than decent photos

Vampire deer again at lunchtime yesterday

Indeed - son #2 uses his fine maroon Plug with lime wheels to ride between London’s trendy Hoxton and college (except when he’s broken his hand by riding into a parked car after one too many orange wines)

@Hefty I don’t want a repeat of having to ride back to Hackney to not find the couple who decided to take what they thought was a short cut - it was a couple of days before I heard they were OK. But the sunshine through Epping…

Swan heading east

10 lapwings heading west

Kestrel recharging its batteries

Well, I waited up. At 4.59 Mars started setting behind the moon, and within 15 seconds a thick blob of cloud got in the way. Short video to follow. Harrumph.

Mars looking pretty good - usual wobble in the air, but should be able to extract some reasonable images from a few 5,000+ frame avi files.

I’m not sure I’m going to be up in time for the occultation. Should I have another beer now and try to stay up, or grab a few hours’ kip and hope I can get up at 4.30?

The moon will appear 109 times the diameter of Mars, so the latter will be pretty tiny. It will take about 35 seconds to “set” behind the edge of the moon.