It’s what drives wildlife photographers to spend hours upon hours sitting still in one spot, to catch that amazing photograph of that elusive creature.
Andrew Fusek Peters is one such photographer. He is working for the National Trust and Natural England in the UK to record images of species and landscape, but it is his image of one small bird that has the world talking.
He’s taken some amazing bird photography, and owls have been a regular feature, but he admits this is the first time he’d found these little ones in the wild – the Shropshire owl.
These owls are hard to find for two reasons. First of all there’s not too many of the them to start with. Secondly, they are only around 21 to 23 centimetres in size.
Talking to Daily Mail UK, Peters said he’d been waiting a long time to find one, but a farmer told him there were some on his property and allowed him access.
“They live up to their name – they are little owls. So they are hard to spot at the best of times, but this one had craftily sat on the top of an old farm building where its colours blended right in,” Peters told Daily Mail.
“It took a couple of visits and a lot of patience but it was well worth it to get the pictures of it. I was over the moon.
“And to get the bird looking right at me was incredible. It shows just how alert they are – he was probably watching me for ages and no doubt knew the moment I spotted him but let me have my picture.”
This article originally appeared on Starts at 60.
