TomKal foto

The last of the falcons included in the fauna of Poland is finally making its way into my gallery, and not just with documentary photos of its contents. Eleonora's Falcons may not be a very rare species, but they are found on rocky cliffs, so it is difficult to get good photos that require to reduce distance to the birds. They occur during the breeding season almost all over the Mediterranean. I managed to observe and photograph them in Italy. The falcons nesting site is truly breathtaking. Beautiful rock formations, cliffs with various cracks, gouges, where the falcons have thousands of places to nest. Sitting in the falcon's shelter, the sun initially colours the whole cliff in an intense yellow with its light, so that after a while the intense light creates big contrasts and a completely different aesthetic impression of the falcon's habitat. There were a lot of birds and sometimes they were so close that a souvenir film of such an encounter had to be taken with a phone, because the long lenses that were at hand could not cope. I took a lot of time, sitting among the falcons on the cliff because it's amazing to be so close to them in such a beautiful, amazing natural setting. Taking static photos of the birds sitting on the rock is not a problem at this location. It just takes a little perseverance, determination and patience until the falcon sits close enough in good light to snap a good photo. Those dynamic shots of the birds in flight are, as always, already more difficult to come by, which required many attempts to produce. Falcons, as falcons do, fly very fast and, unfortunately, they change their flight direction quite unexpectedly, either by diving or soaring. They do this very quickly, which makes it difficult to capture in flight. In addition, it is important to remember that they are quite small birds. Their body weight is a few hundred grams, they do not exceed 0.5 kg, and their wingspan is about one metre. But a couple of days, dawn and pre-sunset sessions and I managed to take pictures for a very good gallery for my website. The least problem was with the soundtrack recording. They were calling almost all the time and a good quality recording of the Eleonora's Falcon voice was also produced. It is amazing that suddenly in October, the whole colony will make a migration to Madagascar in search of food for the winter. In the Mediterranean, the climatic conditions are not so bad that the falcons have to migrate, but there is then not enough food for them to survive. But why to Madagascar?-that nobody seems to know. While photographing, I observed that the most common bird brought to young falcon fledglings was the European Robin, for which the migration ended in Italy. Quite a peculiar feeling as the falcon brings a killed redwing to the young ones on a rock shelf. In Poland I photographed them many times, admired them and here suddenly a dead European Robin. This year, the food must have been plentiful, because there were two young birds in each nest, and receiving one redstart to share, the birds did not fight, but shared it unanimously. A wonderful impression, amazing birds - an – gallery was created, which due to the resulting extraordinary photos and memories of the stay in Italy goes to my favourite galleries.