Wildlife artist ROBERT FULLER heads out on a cold winter’s day to check out a popular haunt for short-eared owls

SHORT-eared owls are difficult to spot and for this reason are missing from my portfolio of paintings.

This year I was determined to add them. The British Isles have a resident population of short-eared owls which mainly live on moorland.

These birds migrate to lower-lying lands when cold weather sets in.

But much of Britain’s winter population is made up of short-eared owls that have migrated to the UK from Scandinavia, Iceland and even Russia.

Living near the east coast, we are perfectly placed to see the first migrant short-eared owls as they arrive in winter. They favour large areas of rough grass, estuaries and marshes, where they are more likely to find voles, their preferred prey.

The advantage in watching them is that they hunt during the day. You can tell what time of day an owl hunts by the colour of its eyes.

Short-eared owls have a piercing yellow eye, as do little owls and snowy owls. This indicates they hunt during the day, whereas the almost black eyes of a tawny owl means it hunts mainly at night.

The best time to see them in winter is during the late afternoon, and large numbers of owls can occur in areas of good hunting.

There is a popular short-eared owl haunt south of the Humber River, so I took the opportunity of a clear winter’s day last month and went to see them for myself. I set out my chair and tripod on the edge of a large patch of rough grass land shortly before lunch and waited.

Just after 2pm, as if out of nowhere, the air seemed to come alive with owls. I watched five shorteared owls in the distance as they took it in turns to attack a marsh harrier which had been sitting in a tree nearby. The attack looked almost synchronised, as one by one they plummeted down like fighter planes mobbing a target.

They mobbed the harrier, until it gave up and flew away. Then three more short-eared owls joined them and all eight began quartering the grassland to hunt on their long wings. It was quite a spectacle and it wasn’t long before one of the shorteared owls spotted a perch close to me. It landed on it for a few minutes, shook its feathers – it was so close I could see the water droplets as they spun off its streaked plumage – looked me in the eye and then it was off, chasing another owl away.

It was a special moment. Its eyes, set off by dark markings that look like heavily-applied mascara, are so piercing they seemed to see right through me.

It wasn’t long before another drama unfolded before me. One owl suddenly twisted in the air and then plummeted to the grass. I thought that perhaps it had caught something.

And so did a nearby kestrel.

Within seconds it also dived into the same spot. I couldn’t see exactly what happened next, but there was clearly a tussle on the ground and the first to take flight was the owl, clutching a vole in its talons. It was closely followed by the kestrel.

Despite the fact the kestrel was dwarfed by the owl’s metre-long wingspan, the kestrel seemed determined to pinch the owl’s prey.

The owl climbed higher and higher into the sky, with the kestrel in dogged pursuit. But as the owl extended its lead, calling out angrily at the kestrel, the kestrel changed its tactics. It moved away and then climbed higher than the owl.

Then it turned and swooped back down towards the owl. Swooping underneath it, the kestrel grabbed the vole as it passed, leaving the owl in a bit of a spin. The kestrel then hovered down to the ground, transferring the vole from his talons to his beak just before it landed, the sun just setting behind it.

I have seen kestrels pinch meals off barn owls many times and the stealing has an official name, klepto-parasitism, but I was surprised to see one try it with a larger owl. It made for a spectacular end to a great afternoon