grand duc owl

April waxing moon night walk

Went out in search of Nightjars and the Grand duc owl that I had heard had come back to be a summer resident here in Junas. As the moon is almost full and there was very little wind It seemed like a good time to break the curfew and see if i could record something. Accompanied by Archie ( my son) and Martha with Ferg we all went into the garrigue and the disused quarry. I did managed to get a recording of migrating geese – although we couldn’t see them we could hear them. Nightingales and toads in the distance. On our return back through the old Quarry next to the village we spotted the Grand duc on the tallest rock absolutely still. For about 5 minuets we wondered if in fact it was a bird and then he flew just down in front of us all in absolute silence, moonlight on his enormous wings and off into the forest.

I waited to see if it called and while we were waiting we all saw a huge fireball moving across the space for what seemed like a minuet but was in fact about 6 seconds – breaking up into four or five spheres with a greenish and cold white blue edge. An extraordinary eventful night walk.