Today, after a long absence, I'm taking another trip into the world of birds 😀 I've always been fascinated by the black-tailed godwits among the "limicoles", with their very long beaks and legs. These birds are on the Red List of breeding birds in Germany and spend most of their winters in Africa. In the Netherlands, UK and Iceland I have been able
to observe and occasionally photograph them frequently in recent years. So far, however, always in high meadows, where you often can't get close enough to photograph them at the perfect distance and also can't see their delicate (and photogenic) legs...
But now a good opportunity arose. This year, for the first time, I visited a "territory" whose habitat had not yet attracted me in recent years: the wet meadows of Lower Saxony are known for such limicolous areas.
In the past, many pictures from this area seemed a little unsettling to me, as most of the perspectives show neither a varied natural meadow nor a "clean" waterhole, but rather a meadow interspersed with individual (sometimes misshapen) patches of water.
Nevertheless, when I decided to visit this area for the first time at the end of March, I noticed that the water level was unusually high this year, as confirmed by several local photographers.
Although this had the disadvantage that not many animals showed up at the popular and usual "hotspots", when a bird was favorably positioned, the habitat, or more precisely the bokeh, was better than I expected due to the high water level.
This point is simply very important to me - after all, I'm not a documentary photographer. In this area, I always looked for my perspectives on location based on "bokeh" and less on whether there were birds close up somewhere, whether the bird species was rare or whether there was "action" somewhere. Here I work very consistently with small "windows", which I will explain again soon in a blog article.
On my very first visit, I was surprisingly impressed by the conditions and so I decided to work on a small series of godwits - which I'm showing you today 😀Here's an impression of what these wet meadows looked like from the roadside - the car roof had to serve as a tripod for my Berlebach when I was taking photos against the sky:
I could devote myself to these animals for weeks - however, I'm also drawn to other special motifs from nature in spring, so today I'm showing you my first haul.
The behaviour of black-tailed godwits is mainly characterized by poking around in the mud in search of food, with lots of zigzag movements. At this time of year, however, you can also see them mating and defending their territory. I was able to experience the mating in particular for the first time and the whole "ritual" was great to watch and also lasts quite a while, I have also picked out a whole sequence of a scene for you for the first time.
I was there on a total of 4 separate days and have selected 30 pictures for you. I was also able to do something with cloudy skies, especially in this habitat and these special conditions, as it was then possible to produce good high-keys. For these bright pictures, I just make sure that I don't have the sun behind me if possible, even if there is a slight cloud cover in front of it. And the subject should be shaded, the darker the cloud passing through, the better 😉 I only needed high isos for this, which today's cameras are quite capable of 👍
I hope you enjoy the pictures now. They are all taken with my Nikon Z8 and the Z600/4 at 600 and 840mm; most of them are cropped, to about 30-38mp, in the range I often end up with the Z8/Z9 for bird photography.
Many greetings,
Thomas
I hope you enjoyed the series 😀