Readers’ wildlife photos

Well, save for the many contributions in line from reader Robert Lang, we have a dearth of wildlife photos; so please send yours in.

Today’s photos come from Uwe Mueller and were taken in the central western area of Germany. Uwe’s captions and videos are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

All of today’s pictures I took last Sunday on a walk near my place in the Bergisches Land. I had hoped for some fog in the morning which always makes for good landscape photos, but it was not to be. Instead we just had a cold day with a bit of haze:

Looking like an Aurochs, but this is actually Heck cattle, an attempt of breeding back the Aurochs, started in the beginning of the 20th century.

A house sparrow (Passer domesticus) sitting in a hedge and calling but not showing himself. I stood about 5 feet away from him and each time he called I answered with „Yes“. After a few minutes of back and forth he seemed to be curious what all this was about and he came out of the inner hedge and sat on top of it where I could take this photo with the Tamron 70-180mm. This was a funny exchange:

Another house sparrow that I shot on a tree with the Sony 200-600mm lens.

A European robin (Erithacus rubecula):

A Common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus). I see them only rarely here so this was another lucky shot:

Two Egyptian geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca) flying by. They are neozoa in Europe but already quite common:

A Grey wagtail (Motacilla cinerea) in the creek running through our local forest that I had photographed a few days before but only from a distance and in low light. So I went to the same place and quietly sat down, hoping to see it again. I didn’t have to wait for very long when the bird appeared and meticulously searched the water for food. The light still wasn’t great but the wagtail came closer and closer, doing its thing and wagging its tail, until I could take a bunch of decent photos:

A Great tit (Parus major) taking a bath in the ice cold water of the creek. Brrrr…:

A very lucky shot of a Eurasian goshawk (Astur gentillis) that I took when I was on my way back home. At first I only saw a big flock of feral pigeons circling through the sky which is not very common behaviour as they usually stay close to the houses in our vicinity. Then suddenly I saw three or four birds quickly rushing towards me and passing by maybe 50 feet away. This happened so fast I couldn’t tell what kind of birds they were but I yanked my camera upwards and shot. Only when the birds had disappeared and I looked at the camera display to check what I got I saw that one of them was a goshawk having a pigeon in his claws. Unfortunately it is not the sharpest shot, but with that image motif and only the second time in several years that I saw this bird I’m not going to complain:

All in all, a very successful day for a bird photographer. OK, less so for the pigeon in the last shot.