Sparrows

I begin this year posting some pictures with a very common bird ... at least here is it very common ... the house sparrow.
My mother has in the backyard an evergreen tree, which produces during the winter a lot of seeds. Our neighbours have no more cats (I already wrote about that), so we have in our garden and backyard an extremely increasing bird activity - which is very good. The sparrows discovered during the winter this tree and the its seeds and afternoons they come in huge numbers to feed with them.
The only problem is, that I spend a couple of days in a month there and when I carry all my equipment with me (and it has several kilograms), the weather is very cloudy or it's raining. When I don't have my supertele lens with me, the weather is always fine. After several unsuccessful tries, I had finally in November some luck and was able to take some pictures from the loft of the house (basically from the roof).
Actually I made a lot a pictures with them from every possible angles capturing a diversity of positions - laying on a branch, analyzing the seeds or eating it - and this post is only a small selection. I hope you don't mind this "flood" of pictures.

Wishes

I need to apologize for the lack of comments, posting and blog activity in the last 1,5 months. I had some very busy times due to my jobs, but this will be changed from January. Now I will have a well deserved holiday and I promise that I will catch up all the missed things next year.

Before to leave I want to thank all of you for your comments and for visiting my blog and to wish you

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Pantanal Mammals

In the last 2 weeks I was very busy with my job and had no time for blogs ... sometimes I ask myself if it worth.
I will post now something unusual for me - mammals. The Pantanal is home for 1000 bird species but also for some mammals. Probably the most famous is the jaguar, that generates a hole business including fake jaguar safaris organized by ruthless people.
The most common is the capibara, but you can find also otters (giant or neotropical), giant anteaters, tapirs, foxes, howler monkeys or even porcupine.
Last year I had only the possibility to hear these monkeys howling and I can tell you ... they are very very loud. I thought they could be on the next tree, but actually they were far away. This year I had more luck and had twice the possibility to take some pictures with them ... however these moments were very short.

The surprise was the very short sighting of this porcupine. The guide confused it first with a white bird ... LOL. I took only one reasonable picture with it.

Little Bittern

The winter is almost here, which is actually not a good news, but this allows me to have more time to process the pictures taken this year.
Now is the turn of this small series taken in September in Hungary.

Already on the first day on the discovery trip we spotted this little cutie, but I decided to take more picture with him on the way back. That was a very bad idea, because the bird was no more there.

After several days I found this lazy guy at the end of a canal, which connects river Tisza with the Lake , very close to the Lake. The weather was a little windy, that means - waves. From this reason it was very difficult to control the boat - alone - with the electric engine.
He was very relaxed and allowed me to take some pictures. I could say he was really relaxed.

I tried also to stop the boat parallel with the bird to make some portraits. The first one was taken using F8 and the second one using F10 to have the beak too in focus. The difference in depth-of-field is noticeable.

Unfortunately I hadn't too much time for portraits because he spotted something.

After a few seconds with a very quick strike (I could say a too fast strike for me occupied controlling the boat) he caught this big - almost monster - fish and disappeared in the reeds.

I know, this last picture is very bad, but I only wanted to show the huge capture.

Yellow-headed Caracara

The Yellow-headed Caracara (Milvago Chimachima) it's a commonly seen raptor in the Pantanal. It's smaller than the Northern Caracara, but has the same behavior - flies above searching for carrion. They feed also on reptiles, amphibians or bugs ... like my subject did.

The location was the Pousada Ararauna - an excellent place to photograph birds. You are surrounded there by a great variety of birds and don't need to walk too much to find some bird activity. You can enjoy the sight from the observation tower (only 5 minutes walk from the pousada) or you can do some boat trips.

Unfortunately the weather was far from perfect. Excepting the first one, I took the the other pictures on the same cloudy morning, when I photographed the American Kestrel.

Please feel free to click on the pictures to see the bigger version in a new form. Many thanks to Bela for the help!

Wasp

It's autumn ... but if I look outside is already snowing ... and we have 3 major activities in autumn:
- to harvest the grapes and make some wine
- to harvest the other fruits, crush them and let to ferment
- to "produce" schnapps from the fruits after fermentation
I'm living in the concrete jungle of Cluj Napoca but our garden from Jibou (my mother lives there) is big enough to produce each year a small quantity (100-150L) wine and about 50L schnapps.

But why I'm telling you this? You will find shortly.

Last weekend we completed our first major activity - we harvested the grapes, crushed them and we pressed them after 1-2 days. The pressing process is very slow - it takes about 3 hours - and the quantity was so huge, that we needed to press them 4 times. The result of this is the must, which is very sweet. We do this activity outside and because the weather was fine, it has attracted a huge number of wasps. This was a real blessing for them - a huge quantity of sweet must.
Now the major problem was that they were accidentally fallen into the bucket full with must and I needed to rescue them all the time with a sieve. They cannot swim ... I know that ... they don't.
After that they were very dizzy and sticky, but after about 5-10 minutes of cleaning themselves with their front legs and after drying their wings, they were able to fly away. I used this time to photograph some of them.

The hole set represents wasps saved by me ... and the number was really huge. The wasps were either on the edge of the sieve or on the top of the press. The angles and lighting conditions were very different ... of course the subjects too ... and I used normal flash. Unfortunately my circular Sigma macro flash is kaput and I'm not satisfied with the normal flash at all.

The wasp sitting on the top of the press. Fort the first 2 pictures I used F13, but for the last F16. The difference is really huge.

American Kestrel

The American Kestrel (Falco Sparverius) is probably the most common New World falcon, it is widely distributed across the Americas, that means also in Brazil.

During my 2009 trip in Brazil I stayed at three different places with different ecosystems - Fazenda Barranco Alto, Fazenda Baia Grande und Fazenda Ararauna.
American Kestrel I saw only at Fazenda Ararauna. After the long transfer from Baia Grande to Ararauna and of course after the welcoming barbeque :-), we (with the guide) decided to explore the surroundings of the Fazenda. Just behind the houses we spotted some spoonbills and a very relaxed kestrel sitting on a perch. The light was perfect so I managed to take a pretty large series from many different angles. Being afternoon the bird was pretty lazy, so after the several portraits we decided to head to the birdwatching tower, where we stayed till evening.

The next day morning I went back to that tree, where I saw the day before the kestrel. She was not there, but after 10 minutes she made her presence known. Unfortunately the light was bed, cloudy, no sun at all and this is also noticeable in the quality of the pictures ... my camera is definitively not a high ISO performer. The bird tried several times to catch some food and finally caught a suculent grasshopper. After this quick breakfast she flew away and didn't come back. The rest of the day I spent on the boot trying to photograph a fishing great egret with some success. The egret pictures I will post later.
The third day was rainy, against the rain I took a quick tour around the fazenda, but it was no sign of bird activity or kestrel.

what a ... ? Do I need to land here?

Hmmm ... nothing there ... or did she only check her nails?

finally breakfast

after the breakfast she came even closer ... landscape and portrait

Whiskered Tern

This is the second series from my trip to Lake Tisza (Hungary) and the first one with the Whiskered Terns (Chlidonias hybridus). The hybridus race is widespread during the summer in Europe, but winters in Africa or Asia. Lake Tisza with plenty of fishes is a perfect place for them.

During a boat trip I found several families - parents feeding their youngsters. Unfortunately the light was far from perfect (after midday), so I took only a few shots. I decided to visit that place in the next days again, when the light would be better.
I don't how it happens, but when I got back at that place, it was no tern there. I waited a few hours but no sign of terns. Frustrated, I went back to one of my favorite places - where I captured the moorhen, but also grebes and ducks - and to my surprise, the terns were right there. Probably they have several favorite "hunting" places and they are changing them after a while.

The youngsters are waiting usually on the "ground" - on some vegetation - and start to scream whenever they see an adult flying around them. When they realize that the adult is not their parent, they stop instantly to scream. The adults are mostly occupied with fishing in the surroundings and with the feeding of the youngsters (as you can see above).

Youngster waiting for some fish ... and getting one.

For the first time I made some flight shots too - I know, I need to practice it, but I'm satisfied with these first tries.

The hole series is pretty large so it will be continued ...

Common Moorhen

The Common Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus) is from the Rail family, widespread and lives mainly around well vegetated marshes, ponds and canals. Their diet consists of vegetable material and small aquatic creatures including fishes as you can see below. The adults have dark plumage, yellow legs and a red facial shield, but the young are different, they are browner and lack the red shield. They build nests with leaves of aquatic plants usually above the water surface in dense vegetation. They are monogamous and both incubate. After hatching the young are able to move, the parents feed them several weeks and shepherd them up to 2 months until they are independent.
This series represents only juvenile birds. The fishing guy I found completely accidentally. In fact he has landed near to my boat, as I was set up slightly camouflaged to capture some great grebes. He ate first some plants, and caught quickly that fish. After some proteins in stomach he decided to take a bath, arrange the feathers and to prepare to sleep.

Great Kiskadee

The Great Kiskdee (Pitangus sulphuratus) portuguese name Bem-te-vi is one of the most common birds in South America. It can be found basically everywhere in Brazil.
It belongs to flycatchers and it's normal diet consists of insects and fruits, what you can see very well in 2 of the pictures, but it's not unusual to see it fishing like the kingfishers. After eating some fishes they puke out - like the kingfisher - the not digestible parts ... what you can also see in one of the picture.

Warming up in the morning sun - that morning we had 6 degrees centigrade, which is considered a really cold night for brazilian standards.

They can be found oftenly sitting on a wooden perch and searching for some food

Puking out some not digestible remains from a fish

Catching insects near to a fazenda or on some leaves.

... and one more time sitting in a tree near to the water.

Brazilian bird selection

Inspecting my hard drives I discovered a lot of unposted pictures from the 2008 Brazil trip. Because I left seriously behind with the postings I decided to post here a wider and not so homogenous bird selection - savanna hawks, turkey vulture, ani, scaled dove, white woodpecker, grey heron, ...

Lady(bird)s

This weekend I decided to continue the "macro project" and visited one more time the same place. It is 8,5 km away from the city and can be reached by bike in about 40-45 minutes or even more (it depends on your physical condition - you need to climb up seriously). The place is full of surprises - I saw today a lizard in the bushes, but it was impossible to take a picture with it, because it disappeared in seconds and a falcon. I will make some visits this week and I hope I will be able to capture that lizard and even the falcon.
Til now here are some pictures from last week with a hoverfly (I hope this is the name of the fly), a strange mosquito and the ladybird.

Morning Dew reloaded

Morning Dew

I have a lot of unposted images from my trip in Brazil, but I decided to post some recent pictures - made on last weekend - for diversification.
I found a very quite open field about 10 km from the city, it is right before a forest and it's very rich in insects. Mornings is relative dark (from the shade of the forest) and wet as well (at 11 o'clock you can find dew on the leaves). If you want to do some sunny pictures, you need to wait til midday or even later, the only problem was the heat - about 35 degrees centigrade at 13 o'clock. At 14 o'clock I gave up, but I will go back next weekend.
This is only a small part of the pictures, I will post the rest of them next week or on weekend.

Black-collared Hawk

The Black-collared Hawk (Busarellus nigricollis) is a bird of prey found near to rivers or lakes in Central and South America. It feeds mainly on fish, searching the water fot it from the trees and swooping down and catching them using its long curved and powerful talons.
On my first trip in 2008 I have seen none, but this year my luck has changed. I saw one near to Fazenda Baia Grande and several ones on the river at Fazenda Ararauna, which is an excellent place for photographing water birds. Unfortunately no fishing shot with it - maybe next time.