Spring is in the air 2

Yesterday at 12:44 the sun crossed the equator, which marks the beginning of spring. Fortunately the weather agreed with this, and today we had a really nice spring-day with lots of sunshine and nice temperatures. Together with Jaap Schelvis I went to Drenthe, in search for the first dragonflies of this year, the Siberian Winter Damsels. With temperatures above 13C they start to fly again, which makes it a lot easier to find them. Now we faced another problem... It seems that now they can fly again, they want to do so as much as possible. This made it really difficult for us to approach them without scaring them.

But with some patience we managed to find several that were willing to pose for us. Like you can see in my older Winter Damsel pictures, they often rest in Purple Moor Grass, but sometimes also in heath plants. This time I tried to get some in the heath, like the picture above. Now we just have to wait a few weeks for the first Large Red Damsels to appear and then spring is really on its way.

Spring is in the air!

Finally, spring has arrived! The sun is shining again and the first flowers are starting to appear. So I had to go out and have a look at what flowers I could find already. Unfortunately only some Common Snowdrops were flowering, but this gave me a good opportunity to experiment a little with a small DOF. One of my goals for this spring is to get some nice colourful shots of flowers with just a little detail in focus and the rest blurred. This is my first experiment with that. Not that much colour yet, but I like the one sharp flower in a sea of blurred white and green.

For more experiments, see this months gallery.

The ghosts are back!

During the past days there have been many sightings of Common Cranes in the southern and eastern parts of the Netherlands. This made me think back of the excursion in Diepholz, Germany. Large groups Cranes were feeding on the fields then. During the winter they had moved south, towards France or Spain. Now they're moving back north, to their breeding grounds in Scandinavia and the Baltic states. With some easterly winds their migration routes just touch the eastern part like this week. As I was in Eibergen, I hoped to find a few Cranes myself. Yesterday we tried, without succes. Today we went towards the Zwillbrocker Venn, a moor area just across the border in Germany. While driving around a little, I suddenly saw a group of large birds flying in a v-shape. I quickly stopped the car, grabbed my bins and indeed, a large group of Cranes. The light still isn't good, but this was a chance I didn't want to miss. A quick count learned that there were 95 in the group. They weren't flying very high so I could grab a few flight shots before they were gone again.

A short sighting, but its always great to hear and see those magnificent birds. For more pictures, see this months gallery.