How to take daytime pictures of an Eastern Barn Owl

Buy a retirement village studio unit close to right habitat, let's say the Townsville Town Common Conservation Park,  Queensland, Australia.

Bird in the park often each week for, say, about eight years. Don't stick to the road and formed tracks. Overcome fear of long grass.  Take care to make friends of snakes and other threats.

Finally, stumble upon and flush sleepy owl from low in shrubby tree in untrodden area of the park. Watch where owl flies. Check camera settings are right for owl's probable further flight.

Guess right and grab about 12 frames with Canon R5 and 200-800 lens. Pray for and later find a few sharp images. Easy peasy, as they say. 

    

Magpie-larks busy mud-nest builders

Caught pair of Magpie-larks busy building mud nest in rain tree beside Rowes Bay Wetlands in Townsville this morning. 

Not every burst of images of the birds coming and going brought sharp captures but auto focus worked well enough to enable me to string together a reasonable sequence of shots.

By late morning the nest appeared close to completion, though probably some fussing about with  bowl lining still to come. 

Raspy result for nest-ripping raven

Australian Ravens love ripping into leaf spider nests and taking them to gravel road or open ground to mop up all the youngsters running for cover.

This week in Townsville Town Common, a surprising change of diet. From nest near identical to that of the silk-weaving spiders bigger prey, Raspy Cricket. Species? With 220 in Australia alone I'll stick with common name. The crickets are also silk spinners.

 

But mostly, in my experience, it's spiders and more spiders most of the time.