Alphabetical list

Its name  in Polish is adequate to the shape of its body (having long toes), in English to its appearance (with red wattle covering the forehead). Larger and heavier females weigh up to 150 grams and at such a scale length of their toes is almost 30 centimeters. Bustards that weigh several dozen kilograms have toes of several centimeters that look just like stumps. And here we have such a long toes. 100 grams of weight and 20 cm long toes! They are so long that look quite strange when they are flying, as if a bird by mistake was dragging something behind.

The Presented pictures of the female common goldeneye were taken in winter during my expedition to Wladyslawowo, Hel. Unfortunately, I couldn’t capture the male common goldeneye, which has more colorful feathering and would make the gallery of that species complete. I will have to wait for it and it will probably take more time, especially that the common goldeneye isn’t a popular duck in our country. Common goldeneyes, similarly to mandarin ducks and common mergansers brood their eggs in tree hollows, sometimes a few meters over the ground.

I will remember the common blackbird, or its female, to be more specific, for the rest of my life, as the photo of a female blackbird was my first really good nature photo taken with my „brand new” 400mm lens on the Warta river. It was an early morning summer, before 6 o’clock, without camouflage I sat down under a fallen tree, set a tripod, and directed the lens to the right, towards a mini-beach, on which I had scattered some seeds.

It is a species of quite massively looking pigeon. The Common Bronzewing allowed me to take pictures together with its offspring in Uluru in central Australia. It was a pity but twigs of trees everywhere around made taking a nice, clean picture hardly possible.

It is my biggest gallery, along with a White-tailed Eagle. It is caused by the fact that they are often the first quests at the watching spot, before White-tailed Eagles arrive. Undoubtly they are one of beautiful, majestic predators. Its population grows, to the point, where it can be photographed on the outskirts of cities and towns, not to mention their watching points along the roads. Of course, as a predator it is quite timid and has got a very good eyesight. So if we make a move in the forest it will most likely spot us and fly away.

It occurs in the southern part of the Mediterranean sea region. It is said to be a reintroduced species on Malta. It wasn’t very common. One encounter with it was in a bird enclave on Malta (see the text about wood warbler) and it resulted in the presented pictures. It had a really good camouflage and I didn’t have problems with photographing it, as it moved slowly, but consistently increasing its distance. Due to the presence of numerous bush twigs it was impossible to use tele lenses.

As it was said earlier in my  comments on the new gallery of a sedge warbler, in the same place I took either photos of a new species – a common chiffchaff. Those photos were taken on the common osier plantation. I suppose it is worth trying to photograph  in such places, especially where the space is closed and you hardly can meet people  or cars. While walking along the osier avenue I could notice that birds were surprised to see people there and at the beginning they did not fly away very far.