Scops Owl has been a bird I've thought about seeing since I was a child. In 2017 one was found in Durham so I drove up and managed to dip it. The day I went down to Kent for the Yellow Warbler last year saw a Scops Owl reported in Kent but I was already back home when news came out and I couldn't make the time to drive back down for it. Over the next few days reports kept coming but I just couldn't find either the time or the motivation so roll on to this week when another was found in Swansea I had one eye on it and eagerly awaited a free day which finally came on Thursday so I arranged with Jim that we'd head over to Swansea (just the four hour drive away) take some time on the cliffs trying to year tick Chough, check a river or two for Dipper and then later we'd head over to the park at Killay and see if we could get lucky with the Scops Owl.
We set off around 9 and had no trouble getting into Swansea where we checked a couple of likely spots for Dipper but with the recent rains our chosen spots were not productive so we moved on to Pennard where we had a couple of views of Chough as they flew along the cliff tops before we headed back to Killay and parked up at the park. We walked down to meet with the other birders and waited. The crowd grew to around thirty and a local guy came to meet us and talk about how the twitch would be conducted. It was agreed that we'd wait until 6PM then split the group for a wider search using the four thermal imagers present. My group walked towards the barriers where the bird had been seen the previous day and sure enough the bird was picked up in the thermal straight away. Messages went out quick to the other three groups and all thirty birders managed to see the bird. A torch was used responsibly to shine the area just below the bird allowing for it to be illuminated just enough for everybody to see it. Over the next hour or so the bird was located three times using the thermals and again illuminated with low light for 30 seconds every fifteen minutes to allow for views to those not lucky enough to have thermal imagers. After the hour of viewing most birders left and hopefully the bird was allowed to continue to feed.
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| How news travels |
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| The twitch |
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| The torch light on the floor illuminating the bird enough to view |
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| Area the bird was first seen around 6pm |
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| Pennard |
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| Duvant park |
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| Scops Owl |
A fantastic bird and a decent twitch, well marshalled in an unofficious manner but the local guys.
Life list now 455
year list now 247
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| In case you couldn't see the bird 🤣 |
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