- 49 minutes ago
Barn owl photography turns into a patient, three-week wildlife chase in the English countryside, ending with a hard-won finale and a few unexpected lessons. Set in Oxfordshire, the story follows an evening-to-evening attempt to capture a barn owl that keeps appearing after sunset, often too late for good light and sometimes only at a distance.
When the owl finally becomes more predictable, the approach changes from a field blind to a roadside setup with flash, a camera trap, and a GoPro watching the scene. The result is a mix of quiet waiting, careful fieldcraft, a few brief sightings, and one surprising moment when the owl reacts to the camera and flies off. Along the way, the video also shows a few successful grab shots and the reality of wildlife photography: repetition, patience, and respect for the animal’s habits.
This behind-the-scenes nature vlog is ideal for viewers who enjoy barn owl videos, wildlife photography, bird photography, English countryside footage, and fieldwork stories from the hide. It also fits searches for wildlife documentary-style commentary, nature observation, and practical bird photography tips.
SEO: barn owl photography, wildlife photography in the English countryside, bird photography vlog, barn owl video, nature documentary commentary, wildlife hide setup, camera trap photography, and behind-the-scenes wildlife filming for viewers who enjoy birdwatching, fieldcraft, and real-world nature photography.
When the owl finally becomes more predictable, the approach changes from a field blind to a roadside setup with flash, a camera trap, and a GoPro watching the scene. The result is a mix of quiet waiting, careful fieldcraft, a few brief sightings, and one surprising moment when the owl reacts to the camera and flies off. Along the way, the video also shows a few successful grab shots and the reality of wildlife photography: repetition, patience, and respect for the animal’s habits.
This behind-the-scenes nature vlog is ideal for viewers who enjoy barn owl videos, wildlife photography, bird photography, English countryside footage, and fieldwork stories from the hide. It also fits searches for wildlife documentary-style commentary, nature observation, and practical bird photography tips.
SEO: barn owl photography, wildlife photography in the English countryside, bird photography vlog, barn owl video, nature documentary commentary, wildlife hide setup, camera trap photography, and behind-the-scenes wildlife filming for viewers who enjoy birdwatching, fieldcraft, and real-world nature photography.
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TravelTranscript
00:16so hello again my friends and it's another stunning evening here in Oxfordshire oh my
00:26goodness the weather we've been having is just amazing and equally frustrating because unfortunately
00:38I had hoped the travel restrictions with this situation would have been somewhat lifted by now
00:44but they're not and we're still not allowed to travel any further than you can get to in a day
00:52and come back the same night which means overnighting anywhere is still not possible
01:01and for wildlife photography that makes it kind of difficult because you require time
01:10to get anywhere and set up and scout locations and all that so I am back to
01:23photographing something for the umpteenth time or trying to photograph something for the umpteenth
01:27time which as you've probably guessed is my barn owl so sunset tonight is 9.15 and the light is
01:40hanging around for longer and longer now as we uh get into june it's june 1st today
01:46so I'm hoping that uh that'll give me the best opportunity uh to try and both see him photograph him
02:00film him with reasonable light and not an ISO 150 000 or whatever and uh yeah so apologies for the
02:15repetition he has though become somewhat of a of an obsession of mine now trying to get a decent shot
02:24of him
02:25or her I should say um so we'll see what this evening brings with any luck the uh the fact
02:33that
02:34the evenings are becoming more drawn out and the nighttime shorter will mean that he's out in light
02:43that's what I'm hoping for anyway we shall see so I'm just walking down the road
02:53to the uh field where I I've seen him a couple of times before and I'll set uh my blind
03:01up there
03:03and uh wait for the next couple of hours to see if he comes along or anything else
03:12so without boring you with any uh of the the b-roll of me walking backwards and forwards
03:21I shall see you down in the field see you there
03:38okay so I'm uh I'm down in my usual corner of the field uh me and the pheasants
03:46um nothing else really about at the minute as a few small birds uh nice to see some swallows about
03:55now
03:55as well um and that's about it really so I have just over an hour to wait until sunset
04:07um I've just checked all my settings on the camera for the minute and I can see all the posts
04:12that I want to
04:14so I'm all set and all I have to do now is um sit back wait relax and hope
04:21that the barn owl will turn up and anything else as well would be nice would be a bonus
04:27so yeah I shall catch up with you in a little while hopefully with a barn owl or something else
04:33in frame so I'll see you there
04:35so hello again and my guess is that this is not the scene that you were expecting to see
04:43following the last segment and I'll explain to you what happened which is basically that after waiting
04:51and waiting uh for the owl the other night I gave up uh waiting I started packing everything away
05:00and no sooner had I rolled up my uh scrim and put it in the backpack the owl actually did
05:08come along
05:10and um he stayed up at the top end of the field though flew around a few times and then
05:17flew off
05:17towards the village so although I got a little bit of footage of him the light was totally gone
05:25and it was all very distant and so then I really did quit for the night and came home and
05:35then since
05:35that night uh the weather turned as well so it's been raining and I was going to give up entirely
05:45on that
05:46video and just bin the footage uh but then I thought to myself that on the three occasions that I
05:53have
05:53seen that the owl uh every time he arrives in the field from the same direction i.e that top
06:02corner of the field
06:04and he always sits on a particular post at the top end of the field
06:10and I thought well every time I've tried to capture anything of this owl it's always well after dark
06:20and even now with the the sun setting at uh 20 past nine
06:27um he's still not uh coming during daylight hours for me to have any hope
06:34um getting some decently lit images of him so um I thought well why don't I just try and photograph
06:42him at night uh using flash and basically if that post is a regular purge for me
06:54uh then maybe I can wait on the other side of it which is the road
06:59um set up the flash on the wall um and sit in the car uh as a hide um and
07:10wait for him to turn up and
07:11land on that post so that is what I am going to attempt to do this evening and I'm just
07:20arriving now
07:21at the top of the field uh I shall position myself exactly opposite the post down there
07:35and um set up and wait I have about an hour an hour and 10 minutes or so till sunset
07:47and then based on previous experience he normally arrives I don't know 15 20 minutes after the sun has
07:54gone completely with any luck he'll come land on that post and I shall get a couple of shots of
08:01him
08:02with flash so a nice dark flash lit portrait hopefully we'll see if I'm lucky that is and he does
08:12come along
08:12this particular evening so um yeah I shall set the flash up on the wall test it and um make
08:24sure
08:24everything's firing okay I've put the the uh basically I've used the um the transmitter and receiver from um
08:34my um DSLR camera trap um and I'll sit here basically I'll put a scrim over the window
08:42um and just wait it out here and hope to be lucky so uh I shall catch up with you
08:48out there okay so
08:50this is the uh location here so the um the post is just across the uh road here um turning
08:59into a lovely
08:59evening considering it was raining earlier and hopefully it'll hold um so this is the post just here
09:09uh that he sits on uh every time he comes into this field and down there in the corner is
09:17where I'm
09:17normally set up with my um my scrim hide my blind so I will set up the flash gun uh
09:25on the wall um let me
09:27just do that now I'll put you down over here and uh set this up I shall try and line
09:40this up as best I can
09:42with the um post and hope that it will light the um the owl should he come
09:58okay so yeah so hopefully I let me turn around this way so I'm not it's too silhouetted um so
10:07hopefully he'll come along land on the post and I'll be crossing the car back there and be able to
10:13get a shot of him on here that's the plan at any rate we'll see if it uh if it
10:19works or not uh if it
10:22doesn't um I'm probably gonna give up on trying to photograph this particular individual because I
10:28think he is just too nocturnal uh to be photographed in uh uh uh good light conditions so yeah the
10:38other
10:39thing is that this field is slightly uh not worrying what's the word uh difficult thing is that this
10:47field as you can see it's on a quite a sharp slope so from my location across here in the
10:54car if he's
10:55below the wall I won't actually be able to see him should he enter the field from a different uh
11:05from a different direction but normally he's been he basically he flies down the road behind me
11:12over this wall which is the first time that I saw him and he's done that on three on three
11:16occasions
11:17now that I've seen uh I've seen him out so he'll probably his nest is probably somewhere over there
11:23in one of the farms um and he flies in this direction down here over the wall and onto the
11:31post
11:31and then has a fly around the field so hope he sticks to his routine um because otherwise like
11:38I said I might not even see him because I have no view uh over the um the actual field
11:46from this
11:47uh location just here it'd be nice if he came along now with this beautiful light
11:55okay so he's just flown over he didn't stop on the perch he flew straight into the field
12:01and he's done a circle around that side now
12:07oh he's over there
12:10he's on a different post I don't believe it
12:14and if I move my lens I'm going to make a noise and scare him off anyway
12:23okay he's off that post
12:33let's see if he comes around again
12:38okay he's back on that post again
12:45I can just see the top of his head
12:50it might just be that the car spooked him but it's parked right here opposite this post
12:57which he normally favors oh he's off
13:02let's see let's see he's gone down the other side now whether he'll loop back or he's gone off
13:13completely remains to be seen
13:18because the field is on a steep inclined like I mentioned
13:26so I think he's gone down to the bottom and he's flying along there now
13:30so I see him occasionally when he comes
13:34slightly higher
13:38so he's probably now hunting at the bottom of the field which is where I was hoping to catch him
13:42when
13:43I set up in the blind down on the field itself
13:49he's back on that post again he doesn't want to come to this one I think he's put off by
13:54the car
13:57oh he's right in front of me and over the car unbelievable
14:08he's flown down the grass verge of the road
14:15unbelievable he flew right over the car so he can't be that put off by it
14:23okay back in a bit update is that there is no news
14:28there it's been 25 minutes or so
14:34five past ten so it's been half an hour in fact since he flew off down the road
14:44and he hasn't made a reappearance here
14:49probably means that he hadn't had no success hunting over this field so
14:55I don't know how likely it is that he might try again if I hang on a bit more
15:01or if having made a few flights over had a few failed dives and he's given up on this field
15:10and gone to other pastures I've no idea
15:14but what I'm thinking I might do is come back again tomorrow tomorrow evening
15:22and basically what I'll do is I'll park myself here again in front of this post
15:29and on the other post that he flew to set up the the um camera trap
15:37with the sensor so if he lands there then that can automatically take some pictures on its own
15:43at a close range wide angle lens because that post is really close to the wall there
15:52so I can set the camera up on the wall
15:56with the wide angle
16:00maybe I'll do that
16:03and call it quits for tonight I think that's what I'll do
16:11because something tells me that he's not going to come back this way this evening now
16:18okay that's what I'll do and I shall catch up with you tomorrow night see you then
16:30so hello again
16:35it's not the next day as I said it would be
16:41there's a motorbike running around there
16:44it's actually the third evening that I'm trying this again
16:51and I shall explain
16:55what has happened at the last couple of nights
17:00and it started off the the day immediately after the last segment I came back and
17:14and the owl did come along
17:19and he flew in
17:23to land on this post as I had hoped
17:34and a lesson to myself which rather surprised me
17:40the owls as they as he come as they come in to land on something they come in from below
17:45and then they sort of break and land like that onto whatever it is they're landing in this case the
17:51post so he came in low
17:53over this incline so he couldn't see either the top of this wall or behind it
17:59and as he flew up to land on the post he caught sight of the camera
18:06which really surprised me that he would take such offense to it so he saw the camera and then flew
18:13off
18:14and I managed to record that on the gopro which I had set up over here just to be filming
18:19the whole
18:20the whole the whole scene and it really surprised me because I didn't expect
18:27uh
18:28him to be scared of an inanimate object
18:32uh in that way
18:34and it's a lesson
18:39that anything that is foreign that they don't recognize that doesn't
18:43stands out to them as I mean he knows this post he knows this wall he knows where everything is
18:48where what should what it should look like and it didn't look right to him and he flew off
18:54and it was a a timely reminder that you really need to be aware of the animals that you're
19:03photographing birds mammals whatever because you're in their environment and it is important that we
19:10don't scare them so today what I'm going to do is set up in a similar way slightly lower than
19:18I was
19:18yesterday or the day before rather and um and I'm gonna cover everything with the screen to try and
19:26disguise it hopefully that'll be enough of a disguise not to put him off but we shall see
19:32um anyway so let me have a quick look
19:38I should also add the first night actually when the owl did turn up he turned up for the first
19:42time ever
19:44before sunset in broad daylight and it allowed me a really good good view of him and it also allowed
19:54me a decent shot of him as well decent I say decent it was a grab shot as he flew
19:59past which I shall show
20:01you I got one the first night like that and then one the second night as well and that's all
20:07I managed
20:07on the second night he didn't approach here at all he flew down had a couple of passes and then
20:13flew off again uh obviously not spotting any prey I do hope those motorbikes go away eventually
20:22we'll see okay let me carry on setting this up I'll do that and um speed through it so that
20:30you don't
20:31have to sit through it all I set up the camera here and put some grass on it and everything
20:40the flash
20:41is just here and the gopro is there recording and my camera sensor the infrared sensor is just here
20:50to activate the camera and the flash so I'm hoping that they're disguised enough they won't spook the
20:57owl again but um it's uh it's an unknown at this stage so we'll see if it works if he
21:07comes if he lands
21:09he's he's obviously a very sensitive individual and wary of us humans so hopefully I think this will
21:18probably be the last go I have it's been three weeks that I've been trying in one form or another
21:23to get a shot of this owl uh and uh I really don't want to um disturb him any more
21:34than I have to
21:36to try and get my shots um so whatever happens tonight uh that'll be it
21:44and uh yeah so I shall get in the car set up the blind over the window and I've got
21:52a couple of
21:53hours wait because I wanted to get here earlier seeing as he turned up in daylight uh uh yesterday
21:58and the day before uh so yeah so we'll see how long I have to wait I shall catch up
22:04with you in a little
22:05uh okay just checking around the news is that he did fly over uh his usual route down the road
22:14and into the field and as he flew around he did one pass only and I managed to get a
22:20couple of shots
22:21of him as he um made an aborted aborted dive onto uh something and they look quite nice got a
22:30nice wing
22:31position they're not competition winning shots by any means but they're nice enough
22:36so that was good it's uh been a long time since I've been able to get some uh shots of
22:42wildlife so
22:43I'm particularly happy about it um yeah no video unfortunately um but uh yeah I'm gonna hang on for a
22:53little while uh just in case he does swing by I have the camera trap set up on the other
22:58post down
22:59the wall there and I'm opposite this post here should he come back and have a rest on one of
23:04these
23:05uh hopefully we get a shot of him but um yeah thank you if you've lasted this long into the
23:13video
23:13it's been a bit of an epic one I'm sure um and uh yeah thank you for all the subscriptions
23:20as well I'm on
23:21244 as as I make this video so I'm exceptionally grateful for all of your subscriptions I know it's
23:28microscopic in the grand youtube scheme of things but uh it means a lot to me so thank you all
23:34and
23:35uh if you're new to the channel to the if you're new to the channel I I hope that you
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23:48enjoyed watching please do hit that thumbs up button because it really does help and um hopefully I
23:55shall see you all again very soon with another video so thanks for watching
24:27and
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