In February 2006 Dave Jenkins, Kev DuRose, Mark Bibby and myself were in central Sweden on a Danny Green photo tour specifically for Hawk Owls but anything else that was on offer in the snowy winter landscape. The regular Hawk Owl was less than approachable and often sat on rather unaesthetic pylons and thus we were driving the back roads in search of other species when we saw this Pygmy Owl perched on the top of a very high conifer by the roadside. As we abandoned the car, amazingly, it flew down and landed on a small branch protruding from the deep snow in a forest clear fell. After scoping it for a while it seemed settled so we set off across the snow to try and get some images but the snow was often thigh deep and with unpredictable ruts and holes you could easily have a snowy tumble but after several minutes of scrambling we got within reasonable range of this cracking little bird as the snow started to fall again adding a nice touch to the images.

Taken on an ancient Canon 20D with a Canon 300 f4 lens and 1.4x converter

1/320th second at f5.6 and ISO 400