Tag: wildlife photography

animals, bird, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, wildlife

Throwback Thursday: puffin

solaner

Since my first visit of Iceland, I’m following the Icelandic news online (the English version of course 😁). Earlier this week, I read a news initially published by ruv.is about the Atlantic puffin.

These cute birds only come to land for breeding and Iceland is the breeding home for about 40% of the worldwide population. Two years ago, I already published a similar post focussing on the enormous decrease of the puffin population. Now they state, the population decided by 70% since 1995!😳😩😡

According to the news, the vanishing of their food is the primary reason for the decline. I already wrote about it. Thus, I simply ask you to follow this link and read the second and third paragraphs.

Take care!

 

animals, bird, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, wildlife

Throwback Thursday: Eurasian hoopoe

solaner
Eurasian hoopoe (Upupa epops) / Wiedehopf

Each year in spring I see images on Instagram with this small bird. It’s quite rare here although they are common in Europe (except Great Britain and Scandinavia)  and Asia. You can even find them in Africa. The European part of the population is migratory. They fly south over winter because they can’t find insects to feed themselves during winter.  In Germany, you can find them only in certain areas. 

For a long, I had them on my bucket list and I’m really happy to finally met one of them. 

We, humans, try to get rid of vermins by spraying poisons over the fields. But, poison has side effects: the fruits take in portions of the poison and beneficial insects are also harmed. With the death of insects, insect-eating animals like these beautiful birds are also affected. 

Make your garden attractive to insect-eating animals. They help to protect your harvest.

Take care!

 

animals, mammal, photography, wildlife, world

Throwback Thursday: last year in Namibia

solaner
black-backed jackal (Lupulella mesomelas) / Schabrackenschakal

 

I met this handsome predator a few times. They prowl alone through the land, always looking for prey.

 

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Take care!

animals, bird, history, landscape, nature, photo-of-the-day, wildlife, world

Throwback Thursday: Icelandic bird of the year 2021

solaner

You might remember, a couple of weeks ago, I posted an image of the German bird of the year 2021. Today, I have the one, the Icelanders have chosen: European golden plover

European golden plover (Pluvialis apricaria) / Goldregenpfeifer

The Heiðlóan (pluvialis apricaria), or the European golden plover (Goldregenpfeifer in German) won the election. Once, this bird was common in middle Europe. Nowadays, you can only find it in Northern Europe: Iceland, Faroe Islands, Scandinavia, and Siberia. It has certain requirements for its habitat. (sidenote: I just noticed, the German word Lebensraum was also taken as a loanword into English with exactly the same meaning – wow).

I met these little guys last summer in Iceland a couple of times. This image was taken in the Westfjords.

Take care!

animals, bird, gear, nature, photography, review, technic, travel, wildlife, world

A special head for wildlife photographer

solaner

In the past I wrote about tripods. A tripod always has a head to mount your camera on. There are many discussions, what kind of head is the best: ball-head, one-way tilt head, two-way tilt head, and three-way tilt head.

Some tripods came with a certain head attached to the middle-column which is not replaceable while other come with replaceable heads or even without a head, where you have to buy one on your own choice.

The head of my old tripod wasn’t replaceable while my new one came with a replaceable ball head. My monopod came with a replaceable 1-way tilt head.

For wildlife photography these heads are not really helpful. The tilt heads are not fast enough to follow the animals and the ball head can’t be fixed fast enough to be a stable ground. Therefore I have a gimbal. I simply dismount the head from either my tripod or my monopod and attach the gimbal instead. Because of the design, the gimbal is quite stable but I can move it around very fast, if needed.

When sitting in a hide where I have enough room to set-up a tripod, I mount the gimbal on top instead of the ball head. When I want to move around in the field or wait in a tiny hide, the gimbal will be mounted on the of the monopod. Both work very well.

My gimbal is made of aluminum and weighs about 1 kg. It’s 19.5 * 7.5 * 21 cm ( 7.7 * 3.0 * 8.3in). It has the correct screw thread (3/8 “) to attach it directly on most of the tripods and monopod with detachable heads. The plate to mount the camera follows the arca-swiss standard.  So, if you already have such a plate, it will fit here too, if not, never mind, the gimbal brings one. There are also some long tele lenses around where the lens mount flange is also fitting in an arca-swiss mount without a separate plate. According to the manufacturer’s specifications, the gimbal should be able to carry gear up to 18 kg (39.7lbs).

The heaviest lens I used a couple of times weighed about 5 kg. When adding my camera there was about 6,2 kg attached to the gimbal, resulting in about 7.3 kg to carry for my tripod. 

To mount such heavy gear to the gimbal needs some fine adjustment to distribute the weight equally. That’s why the lens mount flange is below the lens and the flange is that long. Even when the screw on the top left side is loosened the camera and lens have to be in balance. Now, you tighten the screw a little bit, that you can still move the camera easily up and down but it does not have to swing back automatically. The same for the horizontal turning.


I own this gimbal for about 3 years and I’m very happy with it. Compared to the standard heads, this is really a game-changer, also for the monopod. In my other post, you can read about me first struggling a bit when using the monopod. The gimbal helped me out a lot.

 

When I got the gimbal, it was quite hard to move the swing, but after a short time, the oil inside became softer and the swing was easier to swing up and down.

Take care!