The many faces of White Storks in Poland May 2024

 

One of my favourite birds when in Europe is the White Stork!

Being able to see their huge nests in every village, every farm, on rooftops, electricity poles & telecomms mast is so pleasing. To think that people put themselves out to engage with these fantastic birds is fantastic. 

To the Polish people Storks are a symbol of good luck, their arrival in spring heralds the onset of spring which, after the long, dark Polish winter is no small thing!

So I've photographed these birds from many angles and in many poses. 

This was my second visit to Poland and I stressed to our guide that I wanted to return to the Pentowo Stork Village at Tykocin as I will always hold a special memory for the rather shaky tower that overlooked about 20 nests in a rejuvenated farm complex. This tower has fortunately been renovated and it felt safe and secure and yet still overlooked lots of nests, with over 20 being visible.

Tower viewing platform at Pentowo

View from the top

A classic village scene with storks nesting along the road

Storks nest on street light in centre of village

 

 

In the Biebrza marshes area white storks were very common and we watched them in flight, resting & preening in the marshes and sat on or flying to numerous nests.

I don't think it'll be long before we regularly see wild White Storks in Cornwall as I know that they've recently bred in the county as part of a rewilding project. I look forward to that time!

Here are lots of images all taken during our Poland trip in May 2024. I hope you enjoy looking at them....

 

Incoming to the nest

Incoming to the nest

Just being greeted

Just being greeted

Nests on either end of an old barn

Storks in flight

Stork in flight

The church square in Tykocin

Lost in Tykocin

4 Spot Chaser Dragonflies, Libellula quadrimaculata. Somerset Levels and Cornwall. May/June 2023.

 

It's been another great year for these dragonflies with numbers seemingly high at many different sites.

We went to Ham Wall on the Somerset Levels on 29th May and there were thousands of them having just emerged and in immaculate condition. 

Latterly I've watched them more locally around the Amble marshes on the outskirts of Wadebridge where I live.

Here are a few of my images, some were taken with a Tamron 90mm macro lens on my Nikon D500 & others on my 500mm telephoto also on the same camera ....

 

Barn Owl in the marshes. 12th Jan 2023.

 Wonderful to watch this female Barn Owl quartering the marshes in bright sunshine this afternoon.

This was after the surprise of putting a Bittern to flight as I approached....it saw me before I saw it!

This owl has either damaged it's alula (bastard wing) on it's right wing or it's dived into the vegetation and messed up its plumage and failed to preen it out.

It'll be interesting to check over the next few days on how it looks. However it doesn't seem to have affected its flying ability although maybe some of its finer flight skills will be reduced.

Here are a few more images both in the sunshine and as the light began to fade to dusk.

Glossy Ibis at Walmsley & the Amble marshes. Jan 2022.

 

We've had a single Glossy Ibis at Walmsley reserve since September 2021, it was joined by a second bird into October and since then they've stayed in the area venturing out onto the Camel estuary on occasions and into various creeks and adjoining farmland. 

Fast forward to the 22nd December and a flock of 11 turned up at roosting time, to be more precise at 4:36 pm. 

They turned up for 3 consecutive days at that exact time again. 

The numbers then started to rise, one day there were 16 and now on 13th January there are 18 birds.

This beat our previous record of 14 in July 2017.

They have been difficult to photograph as they've been arriving at dusk and leaving at dawn with very few people seeing them during the daytime.

I know they've been seen on a local farmers substantial dung heap and can be seen circling the reserve at times with a group of cattle egrets.

However today I found them on the marshes happily feeding in semi flooded pasture.

All 18 were there but I couldn't get them all in the same photos so you'll need to take my word for that.

Here are some pics from a sunny day on the Amble marshes... a rarity in itself!