Merry Christmas to the reader (s?!) of this wildlife blog.

A quick question to start this wee blog post.

The photo below was taken by me at our local farm yesterday, after we had had our Christmas lunch at a local pub.

The photo is of a flooded single track road around a winter crop field at the farm.

That said, the flooded single track farm road is not quite how it appears in this photo.

But why not?

Answer at the end of this blog post!

My eldest boy and I spent the afternoon (well... hour at dusk anyway) on the hunt for our local barn owls, which we've not seen for months and have had such a dreadful autumn.

In case you weren't aware (I'm sure you were... but anyway....) UK barn owls are at the northern edge of their worldwide territory in the UK (in fact I think I saw the one of the world's most northerly (at the time) pair of barn owls in North Scotland in the mid eighties) because... well... basically... they just don't DO rain. In order to fly silently and hear their prey, barn owls have fluffy edges to feathers with very little oil in them - they basically can't afford to get too wet or they get waterlogged, can't fly, can't hunt and therefore can't eat and can't survive.

And we've had night after night of rain round 'ere this Autumn.

But like I say, at dusk yesterday, Ben and I decided to go hunting barn owls on foot, rather than by car... and we found one! HALLE and indeed LUJAH!

Not only that, but I showed Ben how to call one towards one, by mimicking a vole. 

My eldest boy now thinks his Dad is friends with all the barn owls!

Anyway... it's lovely to have seen one of our local barn owls again last night and lovely to be able to show them to my boy(s) rather than just go and see these things on my own, like I've pretty-well been doing for the past forty-odd years!

OK.

The photo of the flooded single track farm road then.

Did YOU spot what was wrong with it?

The photo is reproduced again below...

Only...

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THIS TIME...

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It's the RIGHT WAY ROUND (flipped vertically 180 degrees).

Just to clarify then, the first two times I put the photo of this flooded single-track road under a still, blue Christmas Day sky on this wildlife blog, I posted it upside down (the sky at the bottom of the shot and the reflected trees in the flooded road at the TOP of the photo).

The reproduction above is the right way round (flooded reflection of trees and sky at bottom of shot and actual sky at top) and I've added accompanying text and a red ring around a bit of floating flotsam in the flood to show the viewer that this photo is now the right way round. You'll see in the first shot at the top of this post that that bit of flotsam is still there... but at the top of the shot... in the supposed sky.

There were other visual clues of course, which you may well see a little better now that I've explained it all.

Right then.

I have tea to make.

Merry Christmas to you... and all of us here at Black Rabbit Towers (including the barn owls) wish you a peaceful and prosperous 2020.

Until then then...

TBR.