Dark Sky Bonus - Owl at lunch

[westmarch]

One of the things that I love about loading my dob into the car and heading for a dark sky site is being alone in the countryside.  Often I can hear and see wildlife that would otherwise avoid me. This is an example on my way home from an observing session.

 

John

[scarp15]

Very nice, yes wildlife encounters at remote locations in the dead of night provides an additional dimension to venturing out, can be quite special. I have encountered barn owls on the road similar to this. When departing on a backroad, I will drive slowly without full head beam, expecting a sudden roe deer crossing, barn owl encounter, stoat or badger. 

[mark117h]

What a Beautiful Chance encounter.

Me and the missus see allsorts normally where we live, as we have a brilliant woods and farmers fields opposite where we actually live so we are lucky in that department of what we get to see.

We have noticed however though that there is less and less hedgehog's being seen about, i believe that in the last 5 Years i have In all honesty only seen at most about 4 hedgehogs, last time i saw one was when i was walking my mum's dog our Jess "West Highland Terrier "White"" which was a good few years ago.

Still encounters like this leave you humbled to have seen it and got up close too with the looks of it, Brilliant catch.

Unluckily for the nature that lives in the farmers field's around us we have the local council and developers in Mansfield tearing it all up to add around 500 new houses for social and X-Amount for private housing, we have seen kestrels, hawks, red kites i think they are called, some which look like breeding pairs, we have hardly seen any fox's either where usually we used to see this 1 same fox a few times through the year.

It seems like since the developers moved in on the land we are losing all sorts of different nature and animals, let alone the little guys like the field mouse, pheasants and rabbits.

Mark.

[westmarch]

Yes it seems that green belts everywhere are shrinking and it gets harder each year to escape the orange glow of the towns. 

John

[triton1]

Yup we are the same over the next few years 3000 home are going to be built,we are lucky to live on the last road out and back onto fields but I'm dreading the new rounderbout that's going to be built at the bottom of the road.I wish they would realise how small this country is.