A Questionable Tradition
Lapwings are currently gathering together in huge flocks for the winter, on the marsh and in the meadows…they can be quite a sight with their coordindated flight displays which are very similar to starling murmurations…
Unfortunately it is an old and outdated tradition here in Friesland to bring the first lapwings’ egg to the kings’ commissioner symbolizing the beginning of spring…and many disturb nests between the 1st of March and the 9th of April to compete for first place… đ
Occasionally I can get quite close to solitary subjects such as this one wading in the shallows of the marsh, captured in the setting, late summer sun…
Pasture of Plenty
At the end of summer the meadows are mowed and many birds such as this Stork take advantage of this open and obstacle-free hunting ground. Herons, Crows and buzzards can also be found here, where life for a mouse has become suddenly become far more hazardous…
Avoiding the Firing Squad
The Ruddy Duck is an exotic species from the Americas that has “escaped” from private collections into Europe and has interbred with some rare species of duck and is now more often seen through the cross-hairs of a rifle sight rather than a camera lens.
In the UK this duck was the subject of an extensive cull in the nineties and unfortunately it is also allowed to shoot this very cute duck here in Friesland. This particular duck was seen on a nature reserve somewhere in Friesland đ where I’d like to believe that it is safe…at least for now…
It always seems to me that nature has to pay for mankinds’ pathetic mistakes…Grey Squirrels, Signal Crayfish and Rose-Ringed Parakeets are somehow allowed to live at the expense of indigenous species while ruddy ducks have to be exterminated…not to mention that ridiculous badger cull in the UK…
Seriously, these people act like they are God but when it all goes wrong their only way to accept responsibility for their actions is to cull the entire species… đŚ
Memory Eclipse
Mostly I’m completely aware of the photographs I take, though I can’t quite remember taking this one of a Wigeon in eclipse plumage, which was a pleasant surprise after I uploaded the days images to my pc… I know there were several species of duck that I was attempting to photograph but I just don’t recall this Wigeon… đ
Hotel with a View
Starlings are gathering on the marsh in large numbers, as are geese and lapwings…
Along one side of the marsh are a line of electricity pylons which the starlings fully utilise in the late evening and night…each evening they choose a different one, though I do wonder how they manage to make a collective decision over which one to choose…
They create plenty of commotion and noise as they gather and line up at sunset at these convenient and well ventilated, electric hotels. đ
An Evening in the Lanes
When the weather is so hot as it has been the last weeks I tend to spend more time in the narrow lanes between the pastures…the lanes are all lined with trees and vegetation and are a good place to search for various insects and birds, also providing a pleasant alternative and shelter from the oppressive heat of the marsh and open pasture. Lately I have found a couple of quite narrow lanes such as the one shown in the image below which I assume is meant to be a footpath….the route is lined with tree roots making the way quite bumpy and potentially very wet if I lose my concentration for a split second. đ
Small fields seperated by lines of trees make a perfect habitat for the buzzard…I seem to hear them quite a lot at the moment…this young buzzard was soaring about making himself heard…
If you look carefully in the top left-hand corner of this last image you can see one of the many dragonflies that were hunting in the lanes.
Circa Diem
When the day reaches this exact point, I never really feel ready to have to stop the session and make the return journey…the day may last an extra two to four hours at least in my opinion… đ
In the Meadows
The wild meadows are full of the haunting songs of curlews, so I sat down in the grass to see what would happen…
After a while I noticed that I had a companion close by…
The curlews kept flying around calling and singing, attacking any intruders flying over “their” meadow such as crows, buzzards and herons.
Later on there were a couple of roe deer running and playing in the long grass.
As the evening progessed more flies started to arrive… đ
Into the Wild…
For the record, “the wild” is anywhere outside the boundaries of my own secluded life…”its like a jungle out there” as Grandmaster Flash once correctly pointed out…sometime in the eighties…
Yeah, the eighties….back in those days I was a keen angler…up at the crack of dawn to spend quality time by the lakes and rivers of southern England, a perfectly acceptable reason to spend extensive periods of time in the midst of Gods’ creation….it’s like you need to have an alibi…if not angling then you need to have a dog and/or a pair of binoculars or people start to worry about what you are actually doing there…
Bovine Sunset
On the outskirts of the lake and marsh area are drier fields where cattle and sheep live their lives, they have this habit of distracting me and seem to enjoy posing for the camera…they are quite often curious and stroll over….maybe its that red light on my camera…?
Scenic Spider
So there I was sitting inbetween the sedge grass on a dry spot on the peat marsh…hopefully waiting…I’m sitting next to a shallow pool with mud flats hoping that the birds will return….when I arrive at this place , no matter how stealthy I try to be, the shy wading birds take to flight….snipe, wood sandpiper, redshank, curlew…they always see me before I see them. So the plan is to sit and wait…but they try to return…and they see me of course… : /
Eventually the sunset distracts me…especially the way the light filters through the sedge grass….I didn’t have a clue that spidey wanted in on the shoot….
a heartical view 