Readers’ wildlife photos

This is the last batch I have, so we’ll have a photo hiatus over Thanksgiving unless somebody sends in some pics.

Today’s photos come from reader Uwe Mueller, who sends us bird photos from Germany. Uwe’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

The first five pictures were taken in the Bergisches Land, Germany.

A Great tit (Parus major) taking a steep turn directly in front of the camera. It took a lot of attempts to get this kind of shot from this little bird in flight:

This bird was really a hard one to identify. It could either be a Marsh tit (Poecile palustris) or a Willow tit (Poecile montanus). Both birds are very similar and only distinguishable by some minor differences in a few features. After a lot of investigation I tend to think that this is a Marsh tit. But I could still be wrong:

Grey wagtails (Motacilla cinerea) are to be found mostly at small creeks or shallow ponds where they meticulously search the water and the banks for food like worms and insects. They are quite skittish birds and don’t like the human presence. To get a close shot like this you have to stay low-key in nature and have a long lens:

A Eurasian blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla), one of the most widespread warblers in Germany. I had some difficulty with its identification because the blackcap of the bird in the picture is more like a mid-brown cap:

A European green woodpecker (Picus viridis), another bird that you often hear but rarely see:

A Great crested grebe (Podiceps cristatus) is feeding one of its chicks with fresh fish. This picture was taken at the river Ruhr:

A flock of Canada geese (Branta canadensis) flying over the Ruhr. In the upper right corner of the picture you can see a Greylag goose (Anser anser) and two hybrids also flying in this flock. My guess is that the hybrids are the offspring of the Greylag goose. Canada geese and Greylag geese are known to mate with each other and produce offspring:

A European herring gull (Larus argentatus) flying very low over the Baltic Sea near the town of Kiel, Germany:

A male Red-breasted merganser (Mergus serrator) with its distinct red eyes, also near Kiel:

Another picture from Kiel, a Great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) sitting in a surge of waves:

This funny little fella is a Sanderling (Calidris alba). They are constantly rushing over the beach with little mincing steps that are so quick that you hardly see their feet while running. Due to this behaviour they are called “Keen Tid“ in Northern German dialect which translates to “Don’t have time“. Every now and then they stop and stick their beak into the sand, searching for worms and small crabs, like in this picture that I took on the East Frisian island of Juist: