Ordinarily, a night spent in a photography hide is going to be uncomfortable with no guarantee of a reward. That’s not the case with Tom Robinson’s Tawny Owl setup in Lincolnshire. The ‘wired hide’ comes with everything you could wish for in terms of comforts. There are camera ports at an ergonomically appropriate level, comfortable swivel chairs, carpeted floor, composting toilet, tea & coffee facilities, electricity and a gas heater. Most importantly, however, are the subject species. In this case, the wired hide was attracting Tawny Owls and Red Fox, and they did not disappoint.
We had barely settled down after setting up our cameras when a beautiful vixen appeared and proceeded to systematically search the site for food. She was clearly well habituated to the photography setup and was completely unfazed by the LED lighting or flashes. In fact, it was quite a challenge to coax her to look at the camera using gentle whistles and clicks. The only thing that appeared to fluster her was the arrival of a male Tawny Owl.
Over the next few hours, the fox made 3 prolonged visits, while the owl visited far too many times to count. Tom has created a system where it is easy to change the perches used by the owl, varying from fence posts and gates to tree branches and old farm machinery.
Over a 6-hour duration, we worked our way through most of the perches and by about 3:30 am we decided we’d captured most the behaviour we could hope for, so inflated our sleeping mats and climbed into our sleeping bags for a few hours’ sleep before the sun came up. All told, it was a very satisfying Friday night.
