lapwing vanellus vanellus

Always nice to photograph Lapwings in flight and sometimes they come quite close.

Huge flocks of Lapwings in the autumn at Lake Tkern. We off to Scotland for a week on Thursday. Just to see the family but I usually take quite a lot of pictures. Hope we have some luck with the weather. There should be flocks of Lapwings there too.

The sunny weather continues and it was 30 degrees Celsius today. I don't envy those running in the Stockholm marathon. I went fr a nice walk and photographed some friendly ducklings instead. I selected 3 pictures and I thought my wife could help me to choose 2 of them. But we couldn't decide so...

Got back yesterday from a 2 week plus holiday driving around Sweden, mostly Vrmland. Took quite a few pictures and began working on them today. The trip began and ended with rain but we had lots of sunshine in between. In the meantime here's a picture from my local patch, gesta.

Well almost. I shaved a little off the left for the sake of balance. These are the first pictures from our long weekend at Lake Tkern. The highlight was the Bitterns which were very active. I've never seen so many and I got lots of flight shots. Some I'm quite pleased with.

Things have settled down a bit bit at work but still lots to do. The new boss is off on a previously-arranged holiday so I'm boss until 3rd January. :-)

We had a fantastic holiday at Hotel Humaina in the nature Park, Montes de Mlaga. They feed the local wild boar at the hotel so I took lots of pictures of those (too close with the 400 mm lens though) but I saw and photographed a lot of birds too including several new species. Off to Lake Tkern...

They put on a great show. Had a busy week and it'll be a busy weekend too so I'm restricted to photography from the flat windows. Lots of Hawfinches, Jays, Woodpeckers, Red Squirrels etc on the feeders though and it's mild and sunny.

Beautiful light so I waited till it was gone before leaving the lake. This was taken on the way back to the hostel.

Back at my dad's in Helensburgh again and the weather has finally broken. We had a wonderful holiday on Mull and elsewhere and took a lot of pictures, including some I'm quite pleased with. Mull is a wonderful place and we'll definitely be back. Off to Stockholm on Sunday.

If the Bearded Reedlings, Great Reed Warblers and Bitterns at Tkern didn't live up to expectations, the Lapwings proved more reliable, firmly escorting us along the path down to the reed-beds until we had safely left their territory. Lapwings defend their families bravely and will take on...

Had really great weather in Scotland - not a drop of rain until the morning I left and sunshine all the way!

I love to see and hear these beautiful waders