This little robin and his brothers and sisters and cousins were all making quite a ruckus in the Englischer Garten the other day.
He was curious about me, and I was curious about him.
This little robin and his brothers and sisters and cousins were all making quite a ruckus in the Englischer Garten the other day.
He was curious about me, and I was curious about him.
My husband took these shots of an adult Hooded Crow grooming an adolescent on an opposite roof the other day. They remind me of being a child and trying to stand patient and still while my mother combed my hair and fussed over my clothes.
After dinner tonight I looked over the balcony and saw this marvelous bird gracefully swooping to catch insects a few feet above the grass. It catches its dinner by repeatedly flying in short loops, taking a brief rest between each loop. It maneuvers wonderfully, flies upside-down and seems to pause mid-air when catching a bug. This is the first Spotted Flycatcher I’ve seen!
This juvenile Moorhen was slurping up slime in the Englischer Garten the other day, looking very much like a dinosaur.
Trying to photograph birds will drive any sane person mad, but photographing bats is pure madness. Every evening at dusk a stream of bats flies out of a small opening above our drainpipe. The bats fly in large circles around the yard and even circle through our balcony area, driving our cat wild. Last night I was mad enough to try to capture one, so I stood on the balcony for some time, shooting randomly into the dark in the hopes that one of these swift creatures would happen to be flying across my viewfinder. And I caught some! They are blurry, but they are mine.
I suppose that I am so used to seeing the sleek bodies of birds in my viewfinder that I was a little shocked when I saw the images I captured. They truly are winged mice flying through the night! While standing so close to them as they flew out I noticed that they made swishing sounds, as if their wings were made of satin.
Unfortunately I don’t know anything about bat identification, so I can’t tell you what species these are. If anyone has any hints, please let me know.
After so many days of rain I was so happy to finally have the chance to wander through the Tiergarten this afternoon. In my search for shy creatures I found a shady clearing where I could photograph this little chaffinch undisturbed by dogs and bicycles.
At the edge of the clearing a blackbird was belting it out as usual, his song mixing with that of a very loud blackcap and a few other blackbirds in the area. I was snapping away when all of a sudden the chaffinch was missing from my viewfinder, the blackcap was quiet, and the blackbirds’ songs changed to a series of short, high pitched notes.
The sound reminded me of something, and I remembered this post that I read the other day describing the call that American Robins make when a hawk is nearby. This gave me the brilliant idea that I should stop staring at the barren ground through the viewfinder, remove my face from the back of the camera, and look up. And lo and behold…
right above me was a Northern Goshawk. It only stayed for a few seconds before flying off as silently as it arrived. The blackbirds immediately returned to their loud songs, but I couldn’t find my chaffinch again.