Category Archives: animals

Travel Tuesday: pot whale

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Sometimes, one of the big whale swims accidentally in a part of the ocean too shallow for them. I.e in winter 2015/2016 a few adolescent put whales came into German Bight. They need deep water for hunting giant squids. It’s assumed, these whales lost orientation and got lost in the wrong part of the atlantic ocean. It was impossible to direct them back to deep water, so the finally died of starving.

This wasn’t the first time, such a whale stranded at a German coast accidentally. In my image above you can see the skeleton of a pot whale that has died because of such an error in navigation a few years ago. Now, the prepared skeleton in hanging in a museum. Behind the skeleton they put up a mockup of a giant squid. You can see the huge eye of the giant squid easily above the skull. Both animals are of nearly the same size. The thin line around the skull of the whale symbolise the shape of the head. Imagine of the fight between a pot whale and a giant squid in about 1,000 m depth: a strong jaw agains 8 long arms and a sharp spout.

Take care!

 

cleaning line

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This morning, I got the short-term opportunity to go photographing wild flamingos.

Near the Dutch border some escaped flamingos found home a few decades ago. The first birds were seen here in 1970. Today, about 40 of these birds are living here, together with some geese, seagulls and other water birds. They even grow fledglings with some success. It’s the most northern breeding spot for them. You can find 3 species: Greater Flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus / Rosaflamingo),American Flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber / Kubaflamingo) und Chilean Flamingo (Phoenicopterus chilensis / Chileflamingo).  A few single sights even named a forth one: Lesser Flamingo (Phoeniconaias minor / Zwergflamingo)

The birds stay here for the summer months. During winter, they migrate to southern Netherlands.

Despite the huge distance of about 130 km, I was a 8 a.m. on location. But, you can’t come near to the water. In three different places they have set up observing booths. In one of the places I was lucky enough to get a good image of 5 flamingos while doing their morning routing 🙂 I guess, these are Chilean Flamingos, but I’m not completely sure. The color of their knees would be the proof for my guess.

The above image is taken by using my 80-400 lens extend by an 2x teleconverter attached to my DX camera supported by a monopod and ISO 400, f11 (because of the converter). So, the result is like I’d have used a 1200mm on my full frame camera. Using such a long focal length brings some problems: you must have an extremely high shutter speed (but how to do with f11 and a week sensor with ISO higher than 400?). The monopod helps ab bit, but it’s still like playing lotto. Thus I’m very happy with the result.

Stay tuned!