No, we're not referring to the Swedish summer, but rather a first time visitor to Lidingö...
Even if we aren't out on a great African adventure at the moment, there are excellent wildlife experiences to be had on our home turf as well. We've seen quite a few foxes this spring and summer, some almost literally on our doorstep (!) and we also discovered a badger den with two cubs in the woods, right next to the running trail!
The real excitement though has been stirred up by a visitor from the north, the Great Grey Owl. It was discovered at the beginning of May in a small nature reserve and has since been spotted on several occasions in the same area.
Since we had heard that the owl had been spotted in one location especially, we decided to go there and have a look last Sunday, when the weather wasn't fantastic and that hopefully would entail less people out for a walk in the area. Unbelievably the owl sat on a fence post a couple of metres from the road, totally ignoring us, once it had curiously checked us out!
Last year was an unusually good year for lemmings in the northern parts of Sweden and therefore there are many owls this year. Since their prey are more scarce this year, the lack of food is causing them to venture outside of their normal range, spreading even to the very south of Sweden. Whether these individuals will stay or not is very uncertain, but we're hoping“our” owl will settle here and eventually get some company..?
We stayed with it for quite some time, as it kept a look-out for anything small that moved. When a vehicle stopped very close to the fence post where the owl was sitting though, he decided enough is enough and took off into the trees on the other side of the field.
As we had been feeding the resident mosquito population for an hour by that time, we had also had enough for now, but we might be back another day... once we've recovered from the blood loss.
/A & J
