Checkin with the Owls

14 April 2021 In Badgers Bird photography Flash Mammals Millers wood PHOTOGRAPHY Tawny owl

I stayed behind after my guests had left, worked for a couple of hours moving woodchip around then set up for the Owls.

I recently bought some Godox flashes and wanted to try them out as optical slaves, sounds difficult but quite easy once set up.

They are only cheap and basic so only work in manual which is ideal for what I need, the optical slave means that it will fire once it sees another flash going off, this I wanted to see in situ working with my trusty Nikon flashes.

One slight problem which I will mention later but easily sorted and worked a treat as I want these to illuminate the set for the badgers if they wandered in.

I used my trusted setup, one flash on either side of the post, and put a Godox one, with the optical slave on a small stump a foot off the ground in the middle of the set, set to 1/16 power to lift any shadows.

I set two more Godox flashes around where the Badgers come in just in case one visited whilst shooting the Owls and I could just fire away, this is when I noticed a problem, two of the flashes set to optical slave would go into sleep mode after 10 mins and the only way I could wake then was to go outside and press a button, they wouldn’t wake as suggested by half-pressing the shutter.

I reset them twice but then let them sleep as it was getting near to home time. ( I turned the sleep function off the next morning so this won’t happen again)

Anyhow back to the owls, the male owl came in just before it got dark and took a mouse, then straight back again for another, the male is greyer and smaller and was the only owl out that evening and hopefully, this means the female is now sat on eggs and the male will bring her food.

I had around 12 visits from the owl, some successfully grabbing a mouse and flying off, sometimes just missing and landing on the post to finish the task, flying back with the mouse back towards the nestbox.

Only on a couple of occasions, he would eat one on the post but mostly flying off into the night.

Here are some of the shots I got from 8 pm to 11 pm. Most within the first hour.

At 9 pm a badger wandered in, quite a small one, probably one of last year’s cubs, but looks healthy.

They do like to skulk at times but I got a few shots as it came and went a few times, unfortunately only one of the 3 flashes was working so not ideal but still ok for now.

Here are 3 photos I managed from its short visits.