The first email from Finnature arrived on Monday 2nd March 2009 attached with wonderful images of a Great Grey Owl from Finland and an invitation for a photo trip. A phone call to Mike Lane indicated that he was prepared to join me at short notice for a four day trip to Oulu, Finland to photograph this owl. After much swithering on my behalf and several phone calls to Finland I finally decided on the Wednesday evening to go and booked flights via expedia.co.uk for a Friday morning departure. I flew first flight from Aberdeen to London Heathrow on the Friday morning and met up with Mike. From there we connected via Helsinki for Oulu arriving at 1700 hrs. At Oulu our luggage failed to arrive due to the very short transit time in Helsinki. However, we were informed that our luggage would follow on the next flight and this proved the case and was delivered to our hotel. The moral here is to hand carry all the necessary photographic equipment for several days photography. I had hand-carried my EOS 1D3, 500mm and 70-200mm zoom but I was rather concerned about my 300 F2.8 which was in the hold of the plane. That evening, our guide for the next four days - Harri Taavetti - came to the the hotel with good news that the Great Grey Owl was still performing well and that in addition he had found a Hawk Owl for us to photograph....... at last some good news on one of my photo trips. The plan was to photograph the Hawk Owl the following morning and then drive north for the Great Grey Owl.

Early on Saturday morning Harri picked Mike and myself up from the hotel and we headed south on a 30 minute drive from Oulu to the field where Harri expected the Hawk Owl to be. Luckily, Harri spotted the Hawk Owl at the top of a tree in the opposite field. To attract the owl into the field we preferred for photography Harri tied a dead mouse on the end of a length of cotton on a fishing rod. He then placed the mouse on the snow and slowly wound in the fishing rod and immediately the Hawk Owl which was several hundred metres away came flying straight in ... their sight must be quite remarkable. Please note that during our trip no live bait was used, Harri was able to call the owls in or attracted them with raw meat or dead mice

After a two and a half drive northwards and a short lunch break we arrived at the Great Grey Owl location at 1330hrs. As we approached the field where Harri knew the Great Grey Owl should be, he mimicked the squeaks of a mouse, and suddenly a Great Grey Owl launched itself out the of woods some 100 metre away and landed on a perch just 10 metres from us - what an incredible sight. That was the start of four wonderful afternoons of photography with this owl which would repeatedly come to bait or Harri's calls. The ultimate image was when we laid down on the snow and Harri placed the bait two feet in front of us and we photographed this owl with a wide angle lens as it landed within two feet of us.

which he collected already dead from a 'pest control' centre. Once Harri had attracted the owl into our field he placed out bait on four occasions to attract the owl down and the owl would fly away with the bait and store it. Harri interpreted this as a good sign that the owl was settled in this area. However, photography of this extremely fast moving owl proved to be a real test for our equipment and technique and many images were just unsharp. Unfortunately, Harri called an early stop to photography of the Hawk Owl that first day on the basis he was running out of bait and wanted to retain some for the Great Grey Owl that afternoon.

Each afternoon I took 8 GBs of images of this wonderful owl.  On the third day we were joined by Brutus Ostling and on the fourth day by Tom Schandy.

Although we searched for the Hawk Owl on two further mornings we failed to locate it which was a big disappointment. However, it was a wonderful trip full of super owl images.