TomKal foto

It is difficult to describe my happiness with the fact that I have managed to take so many such photos of the black stork. It is a rare and very secretive, migrating bird. It has a wingspan of about 2 meters, and a body length of approximately 1 meter, with a weight of around 3 kg. Although in its shape and size it very much resembles the white stork, it is completely different when it comes to choosing nesting and feeding sites. Its nest is often located in hard-to-reach places, hidden from our sight. You must also remember that the zone around the black stork’s nest is protected. The feeding area of the black stork is about 15 km. Making hardly any noise, it is very skittish and, due to its behavior and territory preferences, difficult to photograph. I managed to photograph it by chance. While I was driving along the levees of the Vistula river, on the edge of a field I saw drying ponds, in which it was easy to catch a fish. That’s where the stork could be observed. I decided to put up my backpack hide between the willows at night, about a dozen meters from the water reservoir, additionally covering it with camouflage mesh and leaves. The shooting session lasted several hours, and the stork accepted my presence to such an extent that in some pictures it barely fit in the frame, with a 400 mm lens on a full-frame body. The stork’s nest can be observed thanks to a video camera installed next to it: http://tv.eenet.ee/kurg
Last minute news - Turkey - 09/2014.
I do not know how it happens that this bird, which in Poland is skittish, in Turkey behaves quite differently. We took pictures of young black stork just out of the car without problems. If we had not wanted to reduce the distance between us it probably would have kept foraging. We passed on, and on the small river there were six black storks feeding quietly. I had more opportunities to such encounters and to take pictures just by accident. I publish them to make the gallery more varied because there are still images of a single encounter with the bird in Poland.