The Goldfinch at Välen

My girlfriends nephew Ivar is visiting Gothenburg and he has an interesting in photography and sometimes tag along when I go out. I hadn´t planned anything for Saturday more than to make sure I had 2 pictures for next week’s photography contest in Vårgårda at the Annual Photo Festival there.

I got a text message from Ivar just when I was leaving home. He said that there should be a Northern Hawk Owl in Lundby, and that is max 10 minutes with the car. So we made plans to meet at the photo lab that I use when I print pictures. I checked the Owl report and I got the feeling that it couldn´t be here in Gothenburg. Once we got back home I could confirm that there is actually is another place in Västergötland called Lundby and that is where the Owl is.

So we had to make other plans and I saw that there had been a reports of a Tawny Owl at Välen. We searched for this Owl earlier this year, but haven´t been able to find it. So we grabbed our gear and drove the 20 minutes to Välen.

Again we struck zero with the Owl, but a bird watcher that we meet confirmed that we had found the right tree. It is a tree where the top is broken off so and the Owl is using it to nest. During our search we also stumbled upon another photographer, Bengt Werner, and he was there to take photos of the Goldfinch out on the mud field.

We stayed for a short time together with Bengt and took a couple of photos of the Goldfinches in the evening light. This is the one that I felt was the best.

It is a nice picture, but I felt that I could take better pictures if we came back on Sunday morning.

I picked up Ivar later than I had hoped for because his alarm hadn´t worked this morning. Still it seemed like we arrived at the right time because frost was still on the thistles, the favorite food for the Goldfinch this time of year. We stayed there for an hour or more trying to get the photos we came for.

This is the one I like the most. It has nice colors and you can clearly see the frost. I would have wanted to be a little closer, but it is hard to put up a hide on a mud field this big.

We left them and went to Stora Amundön to see if we could find the Great Grey Shrike. We found it, but it wasn´t cooperative. Still I got a nice photo of a low flying Goosander.

Maybe not the best day photo wise, but we had clear skies and nice light.

Photo Gallery: The Goldfinch at Välen