Slottskogen a green lung in Gothenburg

We have some big green areas here in Gothenburg and one of the biggest is Slottskogen. The inspiration of the park is of course from England and during summertime the park is filled with people having picnic, sun bathing, relaxing and sporting and for the last couple of years also the music festival Way out West.

You´ll also have a big playing ground for the small children and a little zoo with mostly Nordic animals even if you´ll find penguins and other exotic birds here. The park attracts people but also bird life. There are ponds and lakes that can´t be accessed by the public and here you find many different kind of birds both resident and migratory.

Yesterday I went to Slottskogen to see if I could find the Little Grebe in one of the ponds but also to have a reason to come out in the sun after the last day’s rain. I took the tram there, a 20 minutes ride from home. I do like trams when they work but we have had huge problems with the new Italian trams here in Gothenburg. They breakdown regularly, especially during wintertime. Not the smartest investment considering the known problems with this particular tram model.

But yesterday the ride to Slottskogen was on schedule and I arrived there in the late afternoon. I did know that I might have some back light issue this time of day but I have to test all types of light condition to be able to produce a good picture.

I went to the pond and was surprised to not see more people around.

The sun still shined on a part of the pond so I would have trouble getting the shutter speed needed to freeze the bird if I didn´t raise the ISO. I use Auto ISO but I know that I really don´t want more than ISO 800 to get an acceptable amount of noise. Still I can bring life to an ISO 1600 picture but it is more work and I feel a need to get better results straight out of the camera.

I stayed at the pond for 30 minutes and here I present 6 pictures. I did get the photo of the Little Grebe but I really hope to comeback early one morning to get the desired photo. I was also please finding the first Pied Wagtail of the year. It was a pair that flew over the water’s surface doing some aerobatics and that would be a nice picture indeed.