Wintry goldfinches from the archives

  Just a small post before eventual long brake from blogging. Dug my archives and found this image of goldfinches feeding. From time to time it's good to go back to those old images which never were post processed, you never know what treasures you may find.

   

Dalmatian Pelican

  Had a chance to visit lake Kerkini in northern Greece this week. This lake is famous for its Pelican population. Of course there is lots of other bird species too, but for me the most interesting was Pelican. Not that there were too many of them, but at least a couple so that I managed to make a few frames during our 20 minutes stop...

  

Out in the field again

  Even if I love to be out in the field alone, it's always nice to be accompanied by like minded. Yesterday I had the chance to guide Kenneth Rosenlund around in the valley. Kenneth is a professional bird and nature artist. If you want, you can check out hes work from here. We started the morning from a nearby pond. Nothing to see, just a couple of birds and that's it. When we left the place I noticed that one of my favorite hills is covered in fog, so a small stop and a couple of clicks with the camera...

   After half an hour the mist started to get away from the sun and I had the chance to watch how you paint an bee eater. It's amazing what someone talented can do with a brush, paper and colors. Amazing, or what do you say?

  Not only the bee eaters were there, but quite a bunch of red-backed shrikes too and I even managed to shoot one golden oriole.

  When the bee eater portrait was ready, my friend wanted to paint a landscape. As you see you can use a car not only for driving, but as a stand as well.

Mean while I took a walk and photographed a couple of sand lizards and three puppies I found in a concrete pit full of carcasses and gut parts... gross

The day ended in Sofia with few more golden orioles. As said, it's always nice to get out in the field with people who are interested of the natural world.

Sicktit

  Sometimes you end up photographing not only beautiful things in the nature, but some not so nice things. We have a good friend who is feeding birds around the year. When visiting her place, it's always nice to watch all kinds of birds and even animals visiting the yard and having their share of the goodies provided. Not all birds are lucky enough to be healthy, sometimes the bird feeder is visited by sick birds too. This small fellow in the picture was suffering of some kind of a tumor. Usually sick birds don't last too long in the nature. They'll die because of the sickness or decease or because of weakness predators take them down. This guy at least had enough of sunflower seeds as a last meal.