Scops Owl sensation

On Saturday 6th December night mid evening, a tantalising text stating a magnificent Scops Owl had bee seen in Dunvant Park, Swansea, just 20 minutes from where I was staying at North Swansea Premier Inn had me intrigued it had been seen in neighbouring gardens and flown into a Eucalyptus tree along the Western edge of Dunvant Park in the Killay district of Swansea. I got myself ready and no sooner had I done so than another text camethrough saying it had just been seen 9.50pm. I have always been intrigued and wanting to see a Scops Owl in the UK ever since Richard Millington had put an entry in his wonderful "A Twitcher's Diary" book and he had even included a fabulous drawing of the one he had seen in Dummer, Hampshire, quite a few years ago. Of course, I had suffered a double dip with John H. and Tony S. when we had missed both the Yellow Warbler and Scops Owl sightings in Kent in December 2024, we had gone and failed to see both. Within 30 minutes, I was driving along Dunvant road, having seen the sign to the entrance to the park, I parked behind 4 cars mounted half on the pavement which looked suspiciously like birders cars! (They were!) It was pitch dark but I followed the obvious track heading west dissecting the middle of the parks environs and I was on the look out for people specifically birders. A gaggle of 4 people could be seen at a cross section of the path and one raised binoculars, I knew I had found them. Suddenly a powerful light lit up the park and illuminated the lower right hand frond of a tree around 150 metres to the right of us, perched on a branch was a small Owl, was it... it? I raised my bins and saw the delicate greyish brown plumage, small size (like a very slim small Little Owl!) and lovely yellow eyes, it was the magnificent Scops Owl! Native to the Mediterranean, this nocturnal huneter is a rare vagrant to these shores. No sooner had we seen the bird in the powerful torchlight then the light was abruptly extinguished like a sudden order for a blackout. These were Swansea birders, proper field birders who were concerned and rightly so not to disturb the bird or its intended hunting regime for the following evening. They were armed with thermal imagers and they could easily pick out the bird, which with the naked eye was near impossible to locate. The bird must have flown left as it was then seen in another tree on the extreme western edge of the path and the birders waited until their Carmarthenshire birders arrived just 10 minutes later and the light pierced the darkness once more and richly illuminated this magnificent Owl particularly when it looked at us with its piercing yellow eyes, and incredible sight! It appeared totally unperturbed by the light and looked around and remained on this perch for the duration of my stay. One further couple appeared (I later learnt this was one of the excellent Birwatch magazine's correspondents who obviously lived nearby!) and again the Owl was illuminated once more again for a short duration of a couple of minutes before most of us decided to leave. Unfortunately I had not brought my camera set up so no pics I'm afraid. Instead I have some Library pics from photos I took in Lesvos Srpoing 2014.