a photographer's view to the world – a traveler's blog
The Greeks called her Eos, the Romans called her Aurora. She was supposed to run ahead of the four stallions pulling the carriage of her brother Helios (Sol for the Romans) and announce him on his track over the sky. Their other sister, Selene (Luna for the Romans), is following the carriage as the last light of the day.
In this image, we have, besides the first light of the day, the first-morning fog, and the last stars in the sky. It’s taken literally between night and day.
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3 weeks ago, I returned to this place, but this time without doing the whole walk as I did 4 years ago. Instead, this time I have had much more good luck seeing the wild flamingos than in 2017. So I skipped circling the lake this time and spend a lot more time with the birds.
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The weekend before last, we finally got some weather to go out with the camera. We were up quite early to reach our destination at a time before it would be crowded by morning joggers or other human visitors going on their roundtrip in this area. For wildlife photography, it’s important to have a calm surroundings to avoid disturbing the animals. We want to have them near to have a good sight. But, when noisy people are around, the noise will chase the animals into their hide or at least further away from the edges nears walking paths. In nature protection areas, it’s not allowed to leave the paths to give enough room for the animals (and plants) to live their life at our side.
A couple of years ago I was already there. Now, I came back with a better lens and much more luck 😊. I guess I’m going to show you a couple of more images in the next weeks taken at this northernmost free and wild flamingo colony.
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Two and a half months ago. The same afternoon I took this image in the morning, the world started to get drowned here in western Germany. That afternoon we got the first monsoon-like hard rain out of a series with nearly daily repetition which summited (up to now) in the disaster 4 weeks ago. You might have heard about it in your news magazine on TV. Since then, we have only had a few sunny hours. Mid-July to mid-August is called Dog-days-of-summer. They are supposed as being the hottest days of the year. Usually, many people are complaining about the heat and lack of sleep because of the lack of air conditions in the sleeping rooms. IMHO, that problem isn’t the heat, it’s the moisture that makes the temperature feel hotter than it really is.
Nevertheless, instead of heat, we have too much water (rain) this year. I guess, summer is already over and we already arrived in fall without having had a summer. Only around 14°C, grey sky, and lots of rain, when the temperatures are supposed to be around 25°C or more under a blue sky.
Other regions in Europe are also complaining about bad weather: >40°C and huge wildfires endangering towns, villages, and even big cities in Greece, Turkey, Italy, Croatia, and a few more countries. Even Russia and Finland are recording all-time highs in temperatures.
Who still denies climate change? Everyone can contribute: reduce your consumption of electrical power, using green power instead of power made from coal, think twice if you really need to use your car, lower the temperature of your heating during winter by a few degrees, buy your groceries locally and do it in bulk (i.e. once a month instead of every other day). It’s not much for each of us, but summed up it contributes. In case, you want to do more, there are a lot of other options.
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This was really a challenge. According to Google maps and my EXIF data, the nest was about 74m away from my camera. I knew this would be a difficult job, but I expected it to be a bit easier.
A few couples of these very rare herons (at least in Germany – and they are listed in the red part of the IUCN list; meaning they are currently not endangered, but the numbers are decreasing) set up their nests at the edge of a small lake, right in the front row of the reed. The nests are visible from a hiking path and the plants have enough natural gaps of several meters each to easily set up your camera and have a quite good sight. So far, so good. I was also told, to bring a binocular.
After a hike of approximately 45 minutes, we reached the lake. Whan a scene: I saw the lake, the water, hundreds of nests of black-headed gulls in the water, and the ocean of reed as a background of the scene. Did you notice a hint of the purple herons? Me, neither! A friend of mine, a local and being our guide on this trip, pointed to the other side of the lake. Over there, they are! I didn’t notice one. There are a few nests, one beside another. I still was staring at the scene without seeing them. “Take your binocular.” Still no success. “OK, set up your camera and I’m pointing it to one of the nests”. Hey, there they were!!!!!
They are smaller than grey herons (only 70-90 cm long and with 107-143 cm wingspan instead of 90-98 cm length and 175-195 cm wingspan) and despite their intense coloring, they are melting into the surroundings. Not visible, when you not know, they were there and where they are standing or sitting. After I got the first nest in sight, it was quite easy to see the other, too. In my opinion, there were about 10 nests. The nests seem to be founded on some buckled reeds between 20 and 70 cm above the waterline. Surprisingly, some were still building the nests, while others already had quite big nestlings, as you can see in the image above.
The above image is already a crop in post-processing. It is taken with an 800mm lens attached to a camera with an APS-C sensor resulting in 1200mm as their 35mm equivalent. The camera was attached to my tripod by a gimbal. The other guy accompanying me also bought an APS-C camera, but only a 150-600mm lens. With that combo, he only got stamp-like herons. Fortunately, his camera matched my lens too, so I loaned it to him.
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Since I visited Iceland for the first time, I’m following the Icelandic news. Fortunately, there are a couple of sources in English as I don’t understand Icelandic. I tried learning it (there was a starter class created by the Icelandic university), but I dropped out because it was too hard for me. I know a couple of pronunciation rules, but distinguishing the spoken words was nearly impossible for me. But, thankfully there are some trustworthy sources in English available.
Iceland has, besides Greenland, the biggest breeding colonies of puffins. These pretty guys only come to land for breeding. Over the years, the Icelandic government noticed an enormous decrease in puffins in the south (around Vik à Myrdal). When I was there last year again, I only saw a few single birds, instead of the huge number I’ve seen in 2014. In 2014, there were thousands of birds in the air and resting on the sea. At night the rocks were covered by them. In 2020, there were not many birds left. They depend on sand eels and the warmer the water becomes, the fewer sand eels are there. Other sea birds like gulls and Northern fulmars have more options. So, they are not affected. In addition, especially in the south and on the Westman Islands hunting for puffins is still allowed, but the hunters should register their prey.
In 2020 only 13% of the registered hunters registered their prey: 23,000 puffins were cought. It is not clear if the other 87% of the registered hunters waived their right to hunt puffins or if they simply ‘forgot’ to register. Nevertheless, in 2020 the Icelandic government noticed a big decrease in breeding couples in the two main colonies: Westman Islands + Eastfjords. Although the government set up artificial breeding caves to help the birds, 38% of these caves kept unoccupied. In a past blog post, I already explained the breeding habit of puffins.
“the puffin population has decreased by 45% over the last 17 years in Iceland. Low reproduction and food shortages have led to declining in puffin stock.” (source: grapevie.is)
Good news, this year the hunting season is at least shortened from 46 days to only 10.
This image shows another problem. In fall (mid-August) a newborn puffin starts to live his own life alone on the sea. At the age of 3, they came back and the males start digging a cave between the grass and the rock below. The cave becomes approximately 1 meter (3 feet) deep and gets 2 chambers at the end: a breeding room and a toilet. This lasts approximately 6 years (summers = End-of-May to mid-August). When a male has finished the cave, he can start finding a female.
When the Icelandic government sees a high frequented place bearing some dangers, they set up these iron poles and span a line approximately 20 cm above the ground. Here, we have 2 lines and the upper one is at approximately 50 cm. So, you can be pretty sure, it’s very dangerous coming closer to the edge. The edge is very often not solid and seabirds are breeding there. I saw this unfortunately quite often. Even some people were climbing down the rock for getting better photos with their smartphones!!!!! Unbelievable! In the east-fjords, they even set up a wooden fence of approximately 1,2m (4 feet) high, and some people climbed over it.
First: it’s dangerous
When putting some weight on this, you might break in, stumble and/or fall down the cliff (in the image above, the cliff is about 400m high (1,300 feet). You endanger the birds when breaking into their caves. Even when not killing the breeding parent or the nestling, a hole in the roof could be used by foxes or gulls to steal the nestling.
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One of the most beautiful and colorful birds we have natively in Germany. They are quite rare, but coming further north each year. They benefit from global warming. They hunt big insects like butterflies, hornets, dragonflies, bumblebees, and so on in-flight to make their living. They start quite late in their breeding season and leave quite early in mid-August. End of May they were still mating and not yet breeding.
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a flock of mallard drakes guiding one femaleTake care!
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