Here are a few of my favourites, and I have created a new gallery in My Creative Photo Library from all the ones I've chosen - visit The Best of Bird Photos Gallery I to browse them all!
One of the things I’m planning for my new apartment (never mind that I haven’t actually seen it yet…) is a bird photo wall. Not really surprising since as you know bird photography is my latest great passion ;-) So I looked through all the hundreds of bird photos I have in my photo library and chose a few which I think are the most interesting ones, thus deserving space on my bird wall ;-) Here are a few of my favourites, and I have created a new gallery in My Creative Photo Library from all the ones I've chosen - visit The Best of Bird Photos Gallery I to browse them all!
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Meet the long-tailed tit, the smallest bird I’ve managed to catch with my camera so far. And it’s a miracle that I did! It may not qualify as the smallest European bird due to the tail, but it surely must be one of the fastest ones – when it’s flying, it looks like a big fly circling chaotically around a source of light, it’s so fast you cannot really catch its looks with your eye. The only chance to get a shot at it is when it actually sits down, but it does it rarely and usually in the middle of a dense bush… Here are the few lucky shots I got. I love the one when the tit is sitting on that single bough, one cute ball of delicate, fluffy feathers. I read somewhere that in winter they huddle together in feathery balls like this to keep warm – mega-cute! Meet the “Bad Hair Day” duck – a new photo trophy in my bird photo collection. Officially it’s called the Tufted duck, but I think my name fits better ;-) It has this one tuft of feathers at the top of its head that tends to stand up when it wakes up – substitute feathers by hair, and you get a problem well known to at least 90% of the human female population ;-) While the other ducks tend to have an ADHD syndrome and keep moving around too much for a good photo, this one seems to be more stationary by inclination – but it tends to fall asleep exactly in the middle of every lake, thus without a good zoom lens, you won’t get much... An interesting challenge it is :-) Ladies and Gentlemen, let me present you the newest addition to my bird photo collection – the abstract looking duck-relative called the Smew ( in Dutch it goes by a cute name of Nonnetje, and in Polish by equally cute name of Bielaczak). Small, agile, with a flamboyant tuft on its head and a black patch around the eyes, it looks a bit like a tiny dressed-up super hero! ;-) Enjoy the photos. Remember when I introduced you to a James Bond sleek model of a duck? Well, a few days ago I came upon a few of them on a pond in Rotterdam, and there was a vicious battle going on for the two present ladies. Let me remind you , these are the James Bond ducks - or what the scientists call the Common Eiders - but I like my name better! ;-) The battle for the James Bond’s girl is, of course, quite vicious. It starts with the males lifting their heads up, inflating their throats to the size of a small balloon and emitting a truly disturbing gurgling sound – it looks something like this (sorry, I have no audio for this…): When it finally comes to battle, it’s quite a vicious one – not like the playful chasing and butt-pecking of the Mallard ducks which I’ve already written about once. I only managed to get one shot – see how much water gets stirred up when two ducky Bonds fight! The winner of the fight proceeds to perform a ritual washing, which looks like this: And after this fast freshening-up he’s ready to take the place at the girl-trophy's side - looking all smug and satisfied. A truly James Bond coup!
Last weekend my neighborhood park has gained a new inhabitant – a big and impressive bird which I spotted standing still as a stone on the canal’s shore, on what must be the beginnings of a nest. It resembled the grey herons which I see there regularly, but it had more colour to its feathers, was bigger and more “fluffy” – for lack of a better word, had an additional black feather sticking out from the back of its head and a huge beard made up from loosely hanging long feathers. My assumption that it must be a different kind of heron turned out to be wrong. Who would’ve guessed that it was the so-well-known-to-me grey heron, but an alpha male “decked out” in its decorative plumage at the beginning of a mating/breeding season? Amazing to what lengths a guy would go to attract females - at least in the bird world… ;-) This small bird has been one of my most recent photo-challenges in the last two weeks. Called the Great Tit, it sure looks cute on the photos with its yellow fluffy belly, but it’s extremely frustrating to catch it with a camera. Every park is full of them, but they rarely sit somewhere for longer than a second and usually choose dense bushes or trees to hide in. And when they fly, they fly fast and a bit erratically, in arches, as if they were jumping from one invisible pole to another. As a result you get to hear them – they have a pretty, distinctive song – but you rarely get to actually see them… Here are the results of several of my challenging Great Tit hunting – enjoy! Today, on 1st April, many countries celebrate Aprils Fools' Day - a day when people play practical jokes on each other and try to make everyone believe in entirely made-up stories. Well, believe me when I say that this story is NOT made up - as you can see I have photos to proove it - but in a way it's very appropriate for today since I feel that this clever heron made fools of all of us (or at least those who believed herons to be wild...) When I came across the hero of my story, the heron was standing in the middle of a lawn, next to a canal. It was already a bit unusual since herons usually keep to the canals and rarely venture inland. But as you can see, this one looked quite determined - meet the hero of this story: Having looked around, the heron purposefully proceeded onto the sidewalk and along it… It continued until it reached one of the small houses standing along the road, and then turned and walked into the small garden. It definitely did not want to hide and did not look spooked - quite on the contrary. The heron took a place in the middle of the garden path and began staring thorough the balcony doors into the house. One minute later an elderly lady appeared through the door, took out a can of food and threw the contents on the garden path. The heron proceeded to eat placidly, not even bothering to shy away from the human presence. But, my dear reader, it’s still not the end of the story. Once the food was gone, the heron took to flight – but only to cross the narrow canal and land in front of… another balcony doors. And guess what, it settled there to wait patiently, staring through the windows... And what happened next? An elderly lady appeared with a can of food… and so the story repeated itself. So I guess yes, we do have a tamed heron in our park, one with the well-established feeding route and routine…And yes. we've been fools to think of herons as wild birds - it tuns out that they can be tamed and trained even more than a domestic duck...
You’ve probably heard about cormorants, but have you ever actually seen one? I made a biking trip this past weekend around the parks in The Hague and discovered a small lake which seems to be favored by a number of interesting birds – including the cormorants. The easiest way to take a photo of one is when they’re perching on a pole – which they do 50% of the time. This is when they do not move too much. When in water, they turn out to be excellent and incredibly fast divers, spending almost all the time under the surface – only from time to time their neck appears above it and I must say it looks a lot like a very small periscope ;-) In a way cormorants seem to be a cross between a bird and a fish. When you look at one sitting on its pole with wings folded, you’ll notice that the pattern in which the feathers are arranged looks a lot like scales, and that there’s nothing feathery and fluffy to it. But when is stretches its enormous wings – and it has a wingspan of up to 1.6m!!! – you cannot mistake it for anything else than a bird. After a swim they tend to dry their wings by unfolding them when balancing on the pole – another good moment for a photo. It’s amazing how such a slim figure of a bird can suddenly produce that much wings! Enjoy the photos below, the result of my recent cormorant photo-hunting :-) Yesterday another of my The Creative Life articles got published on TheHagueOnline.com – and this time it’s about sharing out city with the bird population. In other words, yes, it’s about the new hobby I’m soooo crazy about lately (in case you haven’t noticed…) – bird photography. You can read it if you click here – enjoy!
And here is the full photo gallery to accompany the article: |
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August 2012
AuthorA fiery red head, a writer and a photographer in love with beautiful design and all things creative |