The main event this month was a two week trip to the island of Gotland. The weather was by far the warmest and sunniest this summer, make bird excursions a drag.
Tag: Ängspiplärka (Anthus pratensis; Meadow pipit)
2025-05-01–04 Öland with Henrik
A four day birding excursion from Stockholm to the sothern part of island Öland. We were around 25 people in a comfortable bus and stayed at the Ottenby hostel. As usual, many early mornings.
This kind of trip often have birds far away from where we are and really requires a spotting scope, but I don’t own one and my longest camera lens is 840 mm (with the tele converter). (If I understand this corretly, that is about 30% reach as compared to a scope with 60 times magnification.) As a result I often have to crop the images significantly. Another problem is that a few photos were shot through the bus window, that does not help either. So you will have to excuse the quality of some pictures.
Outer Hebrides, September 21-28, 2024
Took a trip with my old friend, Johan, via Edinburgh to the Outer Hebrides. We traveled with a rental car via the ferry from Ullapool to the isle of Lewis. From there went to the northernmost tip, Butt of Lewis. Then we drove through the isles of Harris, North Uist, South Uist, Eriskay and Barra. Lastly we returned with a ferry to Oban and continued back to Edinburgh.
This was not the best time for bird watching, but I managed to capture four new species. It was also a bit late in the season as some tourist attractions were closed (e.g. the Arnol blackhouse). Most food shacks and lunch restaurants were also closed (and they are not plentyful to begin with). As we stayed in pre-booked hotels, we were at least treated to good dinners and breakfasts. Most of the hotels seemed to end their season in October.
April,2024
A typical (?) April with hope for Spring as well as snow and rain. The pollen season is also here, ruining a number of intended excursions for me.
2023-05-28–06-10 Brantevik / Österlen
Enjoyed a beautiful two early summer weeks in Brantevik, Österlen.
2023-05-25–28 Österlen deluxe
A luxury four day trip to beautiful Österlen with single room accomodation and breakfast + dinner included. Led by Henrik W, we observed around 135 bird species, but I was of course not able to photograph them all. And as usual, some of the ones I did get, are not identifyable by the image – you’ll have to trust us.
March, 2023
Winter returned with a vengance and 20 days of precipitation (snow or rain). Icy paths in the woods and after two falls, I did not bring the camera around that much. We had a single sunny Spring day with +12C as can be seen in the pictures below from Svartsjö.
The Öland trip, 2022-10-06–09
A trip with “Tisdagsklubben” to the south of the Öland island in the middle of the migration season. A wonderful trip, that yielded eleven new “bildkryss” (species).
July, 2022
July has been cooler than last year and we spent a couple of weeks at the island of Gotland and visited some new places.
April, 2022
A chilly Spring this year. I started attending a second Tuesday (early morning) club, out on the Mälarö islands (MOF in photo captions below). We also had a short visit to the island of Gotland over Easter. But now it’s time to start packing for the trip down to the Österlen in the south of Sweden for the next two weeks.
Tavi's Birds 