Nearly as common as the blackcap, which I heard all the way across Europe, and possibly even harder to spot, is the common chiffchaff, but this one yesterday morning finally relented.
Also about as hard to spot as the previous two, but much less seldomly heard, at least by me, was this darling little Eurasian wren.
And that’s a wrap on the little, hard-to-spot birds in shades of brown and grey that I found in Prague. With any luck, I’ll be looking for their North American counterparts tomorrow morning in Estabrook Park.
It was another gorgeous morning in Prague for my last morning out, and this time I was lucky enough to get close to one of the tufted ducks on the Vitava River. You may recall that I saw them often in South Holland, but here is where I saw them first on this trip.
Word must have gotten out that a jay at the top of the hill gave me a hard time yesterday, because today there were at least three jays begging me to take their picture. Actually, it was probably an exasperated parent with some recently fledged youngsters, of course, but I like the first story better.
I was really hoping to catch a blue tit for you this morning, and I did hear a couple, but they otherwise gave me the slip, so here’s a darling little marsh tit, instead, which I first spotted in Ljubljana.
Finally, the Eurasian blackcaps have been plentiful, and here’s one who let me have a picture two days in a row, which is pretty amazing given that I’ve only ever managed to get pictures of them twice before: once in Delft, and once in Shkodër, Albania!
Lastly, this will probably be my last post of this trip, and if things go my way, I’ll be back in Estabrook Park on Friday morning. Wish me luck, and I’ll try to post a place holder to tide you over till then.
We had a nice train ride to Prague yesterday, a great dinner out, and this morning I got up good-and-early to see what critters might be around. I was happy to find that there is a big park on a hill just to the west of downtown, called Petřín Hill, and similar to the one I found in Ljubljana.
I’ve seen a few great spotted woodpeckers this trip, but this one was so busy searching high and low for something to eat that it hardly paid me no never mind, and I could finally get a picture to show you.
I’ve also glimpsed a couple of Eurasian jays, but this one lingered for just the extra second I needed to sneak this picture through the pine needles.
Now it’s time for dinner, and my traveling companions are waiting for me, so I’ve gotta let you go, but before I do, wish me good luck for tomorrow morning, which will be my last outing before we start our long journey home.
Truth be told, I wouldn’t mind being on my way home right now, and while we are technically moving in that direction, we’ve got one more stop to make because it would be a crying shame to come all this way and not stop in to visit the “the historical capital of Bohemia,” which my two buddies from Milwaukee have not yet had to pleasure of seeing. Thus, we’ll be catching the train to Prague in a couple of hours, and I won’t have time to look for more Polish wildlife this morning. As luck would have it, however, I’ve still got a few pictures from Germany and London that I never got to show you, so here we go.
In Germany, we stayed in a nice old inn on the outskirts of town, which was surrounded by forests, and we didn’t yet realize that the fuel line in one of the vehicles had developed a leak, so we thought we had plenty of time and planned on a nice leisurely start to the day.
The nicest surprise for me, however, was getting to see my very first mistle thrush (Turdus viscivorus), hopping around on a big lawn just as the description predicts.
Here’s a red-breasted goose (Branta ruficollis), which “breeds on the high arctic tundra … and winters mainly by the Black Sea,” so a long-distance migrant, and London is not completely out of the realm of possibility.
We had some rain last evening in Kraków, which did a nice job of cooling things off a bit. Even better, the rain and most of the clouds it blew in on had departed by morning, so it was a great time to go out looking for wildlife.
After finding the gates locked at a cemetery and a botanical garden, both reliable wildlife locales in the past, I headed to the river, and found a section I hadn’t visited yet, which was nicely lined with reeds in spots. From those reeds, I could hear great reed warblers singing, so I tried to see if I could get a better picture than I managed yesterday, and as I was creeping towards the water’s edge, look who I found sneaking through the reeds below me. That, Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, is my very first bittern in the whole world, and a little bittern (Botaurus minutus), to be exact. Woo Hoo!
Given how long it has taken for me to finally spot one, none of us should be surprised that it almost immediately bolted, but by then I had my camera out, and I knew what I was looking at, so here’s a nice fuzzy shot of it coming in for a landing on the reeds growing at the far riverbank.
These mallard ducklings, on the other hand, were quiet as ghosts, …
and so was their mom as she kept a watchful eye on the riverbank traffic.
Finally, the bittern was not the only bird new to me today, and here’s my very first Caspian gull (Larus cachinnans), standing on a huge fish floating down the river and from which it was pulling out chunks and gobbling them down. Hurray!
Tomorrow we start to go our separate ways, and three of us will be catching the train to Prague, so keep your fingers crossed that the Czech wildlife proves as accommodating as the Polish has.
It took me a minute to recognize this next face. I thought it might be a young blackbird, at first, but its size and the hint of a white eyebrow tipped me off to the first fieldfare I’ve seen in a while.
As usual, not all the critters here have wings, and here’s a Eurasian red squirrel, who was mixing it up with a couple of jackdaws, and whom we also first saw in Slovenia. (I don’t know why wordpress is rending this image so poorly, compared to the birds before and after it, but if you’d like to see a better copy, just click on it, or this link, to see the original on flickr. Perhaps the issue is the extreme aspect ratio I used to include all of that tail.)
I saw plenty of wood pigeons in South Holland, but this is the first one I saw sitting on a nest. I was tipped off to the location by its mate flying in to deliver a stick.
I could hear three species of tits this morning, long-tailed, blue, and great, but only this great tit would allow a nice picture.
Given that I crossed a wide river to get to that pond, I’m a little surprised that the only waterfowl I saw this morning were a few mallards on the pond, but two of my buddies reported seeing swans with cygnets on the river, so perhaps I’ll find them tomorrow. Wish me luck!
I thought I’d be able to take some nice pictures and post them for you on this trip, as I’ve done on so many trips before, but this trip is unlike any trip I’ve ever taken, and now that we’ve been successful, I can tell you why.
So, since we arrived in London last week, five of my best buddies and I took three days to drive 1200 miles across Europe in three pickups and an SUV, and I just haven’t had much time for anything else.
Now, I know that 400 miles per day might not sound like too much, but there was something every day that soaked up a few extra hours: taking the ferry across the channel, shopping unsuccessfully for a part and eventually just jury-rigging a fuel line repair, crossing the border between Poland and Ukraine, etc., etc.
Anyway, as I mentioned above, we have made it, without any tickets, scratches, or dents, and we are now taking the scenic route home, so I have a hope of finally getting some pictures for you soon.
We had some car trouble today, so arrived at our hotel, in Poland, a good four hours later than planned, and this will not be the post I had hoped to write.
I did see some nice birds in Germany this morning, including a blue tit, which I failed to capture on film, and a lifer, of which I do have pictures, but they will have to wait until tomorrow.
The first stop of this new adventure is London, and I had some time yesterday afternoon to go out looking for wildlife, as you know I like to do, so here’s a familiar face from my days in South Holland: a European robin.
There are water features here, so we shouldn’t be surprised that I also saw a few Eurasian coots, …
This next bird threw me for a loop. It’s a great white pelican, and ebird considers them “rare” here, but maybe a few flew in and never left. Right? What a lucky find!
Then it really got weird. Here’s a Hawaiian goose (Branta sandvicensis), which is considered “critically imperiled in United States,” and I highly doubt just flew here.
That’s when I finally saw the signage about the “long tradition of keeping exotic wildfoul that continues to this day.” Thus, seeing these rarities is about the same as seeing lions at the zoo. Dang.
Yes, “travel day” does imply one day, but it’s an overnight flight across a few time zones, so the line gets a little blurry. Then, I didn’t know how long it will take me to find you some new pictures, and I’ve still got some owlet pictures to show you, so here we are.
I saw the owlet off and on during the first half of May, but the next nice picture I got was this one on May 14 when it finally ventured over to our side of the river.
Finally, here’s one more look, and I haven’t managed to get a picture since. I’ve glimpsed an adult, or maybe even the youngster, flying over the river once or twice, but the trees are so leafed out now, that we might not see them again until the fall. “Be safe out there!”
By now I hope I’ve gotten settled in and will have some new pictures for you tomorrow. Wish me luck!
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 