Australia Panoramas

I’ve spent some time recently stitching and processing panoramas that I made on a 5-week trip to Australia in September. We travelled through part of the Northern Territory and the Kimberleys in Western Australia, and finished up in Victoria. It was an amazing and wonderful trip in many respects. It simply is an amazing country and it was great to be back after 12 years!

New Gozo photos coming soon

I spent almost 3 weeks on Gozo again this summer, the smaller sister island of Malta. Aside from being a great holiday, photographically I focused especially on panorama shots this visit, which take quite a bit of processing time. Time that I don’t really have at the moment. But that will change eventually, I hope. Here’s one shot of the saltpans past Xwejni bay, which are still in active use and make a great landscape pattern.

*Update*: I’ve added a panoramic sunset shot of one of my favourite spots on the island. For want of a proper name, let’s just call it Wave Rock.

Stunde der Wintervögel von BirdLife Österreich

For all Austrian readers! Für alle Besucher aus Österreich!

Am 6. Jänner findet wie jedes Jahr die “Stunde der Wintervögel” von BirdLife Österreich statt.

Eine Stunde und einen Ort am 6. Jänner aussuchen, gemütlich machen und Vögel zählen. Im Garten, am Futterhaus, im Park, egal wo.

Alle Infos zum Mitmachen gibts hier:

Moving

I’ve been relocating the website to a new server. I’m learning all about these things as I’m going, so there have been problems and there are bound to be more. But at least, in between periods of utter chaos, the website does actually still work most of the time. Here’s a new photo, shot last week at the bird banding station, to make up for any disappointing visits to empty pages. 😉 It’ll be part of a new bird banding gallery that I intend to add in the next couple of weeks.

Osprey Encounter

Laura and I were in northern Croatia again for a week, catching a last bit of summer before we head into autumn and winter. The place we like to camp is just half an hour’s walk from an ornithological reserve called Palud. This is a small fresh water lake with a considerable reed bed and a connection to the sea via a little canal. There is a visitors hide at one end of the lake, from where this series of photos was shot. We had been observing an osprey at the other side of the lake and were waiting for it to take off. When it finally did, it flew straight towards us and landed on a perch sticking out of the water – right in front of us! An absolutely spectacular moment!

Zermatt

I spent the first week of September in the Swiss alps, in Zermatt. The village is spectacularly situated in between some of the most famous and most photographed mountains in the world. There are plenty of superb hikes around the village and it is also an ideal starting point for more serious mountain climbing. A friend and I opted for the former version and basically went mad with our cameras over all the fantastic mountain views and panoramas that are offered around every corner. For a grand finale we even tried a bit of mountaineering and made it up the Breithorn to 4164 m .

White-throated Dipper

There’s a gorge not far from our house in Salzburg called the Glasenbach Klamm. It’s full of really great rock formations, a number of significant fossils have been found there over the decades, and it also has some nice wildlife. One of the species that I’ve tried photographing a couple of times is the White-throated Dipper. I really like this species because it is so unique in its behaviour. It is the only passerine or ‘song’ bird in Europe that dives into water and searches for food at the bottom of fast flowing streams. It stays down by holding its wings and tail at an angle against the current and goes after aquatic insects.

It’s a bit hard to predict where they will turn up along the gorge, but I chose a spot and set up my hide. The dipper did put in an appearance, though not quite where I wanted it. Better luck next time. Plenty of other species stopped by as well, including a Robin and a Grey Wagtail.

Golling Waterfall

My best mate Michi and I headed down to the Golling waterfall one very early morning a few days ago for a dawn photoshoot. I’ve shot photos there before but it’s amazing how one can always find new angles and views, even in a rather limited location.