Florida 2010 – III – Wakodahatchee, all in one

Florida 2010 – II – Pelican the bomber

In the older article I said the abundance of Anhinga in Florida can be compared to Mallard in Europe but what can I say about Pelican that you will almost certainly see on every beach of Florida? It will do to stick to the fact that Pelican is very common and abundant species in Florida and my comparison to a bomber is quite clear when you realize that most often you will see single birds as well as flocks of Pelicans numbering tens of individuals hovering low above the beach and this all – the large body with wide-spread wings cutting smoothly through the wind gusts - make you feel like a fleet of enemy bombers will attack you in a moment...

Florida 2010 – I – Anhinga, the snakebird

I got excited when I learned last year I would have a chance to spend a little time in Florida at the end of the year 2009. In the same moment I recalled the beautiful bird pictures of Ondra Prosicky and I started to gather any useful information and to get ready for the adventure. The whole trip was a business journey but you always get some time to spend with the birds, but this is not what I wanted to talk about...

Scottish landscape - Islands

It is a begining of November, it is cold and rainy outside and I am sitting in front of my computer looking through that heap of pictures from our May-June trip (honneymoon) to Scotland. I am looking at the pictures from the Scottish islands and strange feelings overwhelm me; the songs from the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon just sketch in my mood and I realize why such a odd but beautiful music got its birth right here, in Great Britain...

Colorful landscape of Scotland I

Norwegian landscape through the year

Norwegian landscape is very different from anything you can see in the rest of Europe. Especially for middle-Europeans is every trip to Norway a life-experience and even for us who have been living here for some time now, it always brings a new views and feelings. Although the heading of this article is “Norwegian landscape through the year”, it in fact only presents diverse landscape pictures from late Spring to Autumn – for the rest of the year Norway becomes a “Grey Kingdom” with short dark days and cloudy sky that turns everything into misty and blurry tones with no colours...

Handicapped does not mean ugly

This title of the article suggested my wife after I came back from Sunday birding trip to Herdla nature reserve (Askøy Island, Bergen, Norway) and watched the pictures on our PC. My primary target of the Sunday`s trip were the Snow Buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis) that regularly visit Herdla in autumn months and sometimes stay over the winter, but at the end there were especially the pictures of Dunlin (Calidris alpina) that made my day on Sunday including picture of one poor Dunlin with missing left leg…

Birds of Scotland IV: A few notes from Outer Hebrides

I was surprised to learn that Scotland had the same total area as my home country Czech Republic! I don’t know why I thought that the northern part of United Kingdom is so large – maybe because it seems so far from my country, maybe because of its rich history. Nevertheless, I kept this feeling even after we have left Scotland after our spring three-week trip – it might have been because of the countless narrow roads where you have to give a way to oncoming vehicle for a hundred time in one single day, or it might have been caused by the beautiful but always different landscape that you see on the way. And then, when you think you have seen every possible scenery in the world, then you come to Outer Hebrides to find flat land covered with heather and windburned by the strong storms coming from Atlantic Ocean, to hear the strange dialect of locals and to experience a weird feeling of desolation and rough beauty of landscape. Our only four days on Outer Hebrides meant we could superficially explore the islands but had not much time to watch birds. The little we saw from avifauna is included in this short article…

Birds of Scotland III: Cliff colonies of North and West coast

The cliffs rimming most of the coast of Scotland are home to hundreds of thousands of seabirds. Almost every cliff is teeming with life and host at least one of the most common species of seabirds – mostly Fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis), ever-present Gulls, Guillemots (Uria aalge), Razorbills (Alca torda) and Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica). During our June trip to Scotland we had an opportunity to visit some of the most famous cliff colonies on the northern and western coast of Scotland...

Birds of Scotland II: east coast – Fowlsheugh and Troup Head

Scotland and generally the whole United Kingdom is a paradise for birdwatchers. Great number of RSPB reserves (The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) is represented by cliff colonies of seabirds that can be found along the whole coast in United Kingdom and adjacent islands. The most common and well-known inhabitants of these colonies are gulls, Guillemots, Razorbills, Puffins and others less numbered species...

Runde 2009 – birds in the mist

Birds of Scotland I: Bass Rock – wildlife wonder of the world

One of the wildlife wonders of the world – this is how Sir David Attenborough called the rocky island standing up from the waters close to the coast some 35 km east of Edinburgh. When I saw the first pictures of Northern Gannet from Bass Rock on the internet, I realized that the documentary I watched few years ago and where David Attenborough is watching large Gannet colony was shot here on Bass Rock. At that time I thought that the documentary was shot somewhere far north in arctic waters...

Last shots from winter 2008/2009

So the spring is definitely here and to finish the past season I have skimmed through the folders with bird pictures to process the last images that deserved my attention...

First spring pictures – Common Crossbill

The last Saturday, 21.3.2009, I drove towards Øygarden (the northern part of Sotra island) to do the first spring birdwatching there. The spring is still at the beginning and thus the only species indicating start of migration were two Lapwings and one Oystercatcher at the island and two Curlews at the coast. I thought it would be quite bad day for photography but it turned into success as soon as I noticed a pair of Common Crossbill feeding on the pine-trees....

Smoke games

It was in the winter last year when I tried to make picture of smoke – it is not very difficult, what you only need is the package of joss-sticks, strong light and dark background....