Today I decided to spend some time again at the nature preserve Wagbachniederung but this time early in the morning together with Michael “Foto-Mike” Schneider ( I am still jealous about his Canon EF 600m f4 L USM IS lens). At 6:30 in the morning everything was still pretty quiet and we walked up to one of the recently built shelters to see what’s happening.
It started our pretty well as I spotted – the first time ever – a purple heron pretty close by (for German standards).
Unfortunately the sun disappeared again and was hiding behind some scattered clouds and the purple heron decided to move further back away from us.
A little European Greenfinch joined our small group for a minute or two.
A pair of ducks flew into the marsh swamp area.
And finally a Mute Swan was coming close to the shelter and stayed for a while.
After some time and as I only had about 2.5 hours until I needed to rush home we decided to walk around the preserve and discovered several Western Marsh Harriers flying in the air, disappearing in the marsh, fighting and doing their mating flights.
This was quite impressive though the birds stayed pretty far away in the distance and light certainly was a big issue. The sun was covered by clouds and with some mist still around. Nonetheless, the pictures will not be award winning as of being cropped heavily with the 21 Megapixel Canon 1Ds Mark III nor is the lighting good – as mentioned before but it is good documentation of real wildlife behaviour.
Therefore, I decided to create a seperate folder which could be accessed here: Western Marsh Harrier
Here is a sneak preview:
Interesting article, nice design, i have bookmarked it for the future referrence
Great work.