THE SCOPS OWL

 A Scops Owl had been discovered in a local park in Dunvant near Swansea and it has also been roosting in someone's back garden. In birding terms this is a MEGA!

The Scops Owl is a rare visitor to central Europe, it's breeding areas are the warmer areas of Southern Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor, so how it got into a park in Swansea South Wales god only knows.

Steve and myself had heard of pretty naughty behavior by birders who were relentlessly harassing the bird with torches for a view and/or a picture, so at first we decided not to go. Then a shout came out on one of the main social media sites we are members of that they were going to organise it so when the Scops Owl is located they would shine a torch on it for about thirty seconds so people could get a view and then leave it alone for about thirty minutes to allow the bird to feed. This I could cope with and as this was a mega rare bird we decided to travel down there to see it.

We got there at about 5.15pm and it was already pitch black, we walked into the park where you couldn't see your hand in front of you and already there were people with torches shining them into the trees but where was the organised twitch that was talked about on social media? There were foot paths but it was that dark you couldn't distinguish them from the grass which was like walking on sticky mud and I had already found a muddy pot hole which went up to my ankles. Steve was talking to some other birders when a shout went out it was down the other end of the park in a deciduous tree. Steve got there before me and had a good sight of it, by the time I'd got there it had moved into another tree close by but with the relentless shinning of torches I saw it perched up on the left hand side of the tree a little further down.

This image below is not mine but it is one of the Swansea Scops Owl that someone had taken the previous day. I took it off the internet but I don't know who's pic it is so I couldn't give them a credit.

the swansea scops owl

Although delighted to have seen it the experience was a bit bitter sweet with people continually shinning their bright torches and not giving the bird any space and time to feed.

It went out of sight soon after I had seen it, we met a couple of birders that had thermal imaging cameras so we stayed with them for a while but they could not relocate the Scops Owl and it was not seen again that night. 

After marching in the muck a while longer we headed home glad we had seen the mega Scops Owl but also realising that after that experience twitching definitely isn't for us.