The last practice before the trip to Finland

Saturday was spent practicing for next week’s trip to Finland and the Bear hides in Kuhmo.

I wasn´t on my own this time as Ivar was tagging along. I looked at the weather charts on Friday night and they told me we should have decent light during most of the day so the goal was to hit the road about 8:15. I didn´t want travel too far so I decided we should try some of my favorite photo places around Gothenburg that is Hökällan, Slottskogen and Stora Amundsön.

We should be able to find something interesting in all of these places that are for sure.

Hökällan is a wetland with walking trails and 2 ponds with lots of birds. The light is always good at Hökällan in the early morning so that would be the first stop. I was hoping we might see the Garganey that people had reported during the week. I wanted to try to go out onto the fields around the Skogome pond that is the bigger of the 2 ponds. Unfortunately they were really so wet couldn´t get near the birds to take any photos so we surveyed the pond with our binoculars but we could just find the usual suspects and not any Garganey. We went back to the car and went to the other pond. Here one can sit just by the water so this is a far better place to take photos. We started just to sit down and have something to eat so the birds could get accustomed to us being there. I expect that we soon will see juvenile birds here because they all seem to have nested. We stayed here for an hour while Ivar took photos and I chatted with bird watchers that arrived here so it´s only the 2 first photos in the Gallery that is from Hökällan.

Slottskogen is a public park in the centre of Gothenburg and I was worried that it might be over crowded when we arrived. It was lunchtime and the citizen was out basking in the sun. We could see people having BBQ, runners, dog walkers etc so it was many people around. This worried me because I was hoping of getting some photos of the shy Little Grebe. At the pond we could just the Gulls and that is lots of them. I didn´t understand why but soon I realized that people was throwing bread to them and we had the Gulls flying at full speed over the water. We stayed thru the feeding buzz and realized there was a Muscovady Duck there, probably the same that I saw earlier this year. But still we could see the Little Grebe or the Common Moorhen that I know is there.

I decided we should leave but when we passed I saw the Common Moorhen so soon the cameras was up again. It took off into a part of the pond with roots hanging out in the water. While watching the Moorhen I saw a plunge and there it was, the Little Grebe. This meant we stayed here for a long period taking shots of the Little Grebe while it searched for food but I also got some good pictures of other birds. Pictures 3-12 in the gallery are from Slottskogen.

We now headed south to Stora Amundsön. We had sun when we arrived but soon the clouds started to gather and that made for some tricky photography, but this is part of practice.

One can find many different animals on this small island but I must thank the twitcher that pointed out the Redshank and Plover. Without his guidance we wouldn´t have seen them. This is actually a first for me and it is the same with the Red-breasted Merganser. We had many good photo opportunities but unfortunately we got a drizzle so the light wasn´t to our advantage. I really hope they put so I get more opportunities to photo them.

I hope that I learned things during this practice so I will be ready for my Finland adventure.