Late Autumn in the Hönnetal

Towards the end of the year, I was able to spend some more time observing the birdlife in the Sauerland, and this time I had some real highlights 😊. For some time now, I’ve been allowed to use a friend’s observation hide at a winter feeding station, for which I’m very grateful.

Located in the "Hönnetal", the forest offers a great diversity of (avi)fauna and flora. And in October/November, there are still some late-autumn colors that worked wonderfully for this series. Just a few weeks before the winter solstice, I was able to take advantage of the already quite low path of the sun, which at times provided usable light for hours.

Even so, photographing birds deep in the forest requires some patience. The sun stands so low that it practically shines hundreds of meters through the forest—resulting in constant changes in lighting conditions on the subjects under a clear sky, at least every 5–10 minutes. Sometimes the foreground is lit, sometimes the background, sometimes the subject itself.

Personally, I prefer a completely shaded subject even for bird photography, since I like soft contrasts and brighter or more colorful backgrounds—something I can only achieve with slight overexposure. Direct light on the subject is not useful for this. Here is an example of what that would look like, despite the very low sun:

The issue is not only the uneven lighting of the subject or the perch but also that the bokeh/background becomes significantly more restless and textured—compare it to the images from the series if you’re curious (I used the same perch several times).

In practice, this means I often observe amazing species and beautiful scenes without pressing the shutter, simply because it doesn’t look photogenic to me. But that’s perfectly fine—you can simply enjoy the moment 😉.

With a bit of patience, you’re rewarded again and again: my highlights included beautiful light conditions with the starlings, the middle spotted woodpecker, and once again the grey-headed woodpecker. And then there was that moment when the songbirds suddenly fell silent and a sparrowhawk landed on a branch right in front of me—for the first time in four years, and for a good minute… more on that in a moment.

At this point, a big thank you to Wilhelm Waltermann for these wonderful moments. Now I wish you lots of fun with the images!

P.S. Even though I’ll be taking a few more photos in December, the next image series won’t be out until mid-January, since we’ll be spending three weeks in Portugal around the turn of the year, leading a workshop.

I hope you enjoyed the series — at the end of the year there will be my obligatory statistics article with a year-in-review, and then it’s off to Portugal for a while… best regards 👋