Great Crested Grebe - part I

It was a really tough job, but here it is my second post.
In the last weeks I had limited time for photography - however is winter outside and some of my favourite birds are in Africa - so I decided to post some pictures taken in September in Hungary @ Lake Tisza.
The Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus) was not on the top of my bird list, that I wanted to photograph there at that time - this bird I would like to photograph in spring during the courtship dance or a family with very small and cute youngsters - but it was very popular there.
Basically I met one family (the parents and a youngster) each day on my way from the "harbor" to the photographing place/hide and back. I made so much pictures with them that I will need to post them in 3 series.
This is the first one and I working already hard on the followings. I hope I will have the possibility to go back in spring and to catch that beautiful courtship dance.

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.