A Great Grey Owl swoops for a vole in the snowfields of Finland, in the magnificent image here by the York Photographic Society’s Neville Turton.
The owls spend the winter in Finland hunting voles – sitting in trees and listening for the sound the tiny mammals make deep beneath the surface of the snow, before diving down to catch them.
“It missed the vole on this occasion but then began trying to dig it out from the snow,” says Neville, who won the Challenge Plaque for the best black-and-white natural history photo with this picture at the Yorkshire Photographic Union annual exhibition last year.
Getting the photograph took real dedication.
“Finland in early February is a very cold place to stand motionless in the middle of a field,” Neville says. “But having located an owl we waited patiently together.”
It was certainly worth the wait.
Members of the York Photographic Society meet every Wednesday from September to May, usually at the Poppleton Centre.
But as the photographs here reveal, they also spend a huge amount of time out and about with their cameras, photographing everything from ice sculptures in York to early-morning mists in the Lake District – and craftsmen at work in Laos.
We only have room to showcase a few photographs today, although we hope to publish more in future.
• York Photographic Society (YPS) meets at The Poppleton Centre, Poppleton, York every Wednesday from September to May at 7.30PM.
“We always welcome new members,” says the club’s president, Allan Harris. “People can come along on the night as guests and pay £4 or join for the whole season for the relatively small amount of £40, for which they get really good lectures, projects, competitions and general advice.”
To find out more about the club, or to view more photographs, visit yorkps.org
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