The news was already out since weeks, even in the local newspapers, but I couldn’t leave, because I had some other trips planned earlier. Last year I tried to find Great grey owls, but didn’t succeed. Now I knew this was the unique chance I didn’t want to miss. My friend Ben joined me, and with little expectations we travelled to Rovaniemi, where our guide would help us to find the birds. There were a lot of owl sightings all over Finland and Sweden, but we knew the higher up north, the more snow we would get, which makes the pictures that more ‘nordic’. Behaviour of the owls differs a lot individually, some flying away at big distance, and some taking no notice of you at all (really ignoring you…amazing). Populations of voles in the fields were still very good, and we witnessed quite a massacre because of the hungry but skillful owls!
Weather had been changing quite dramatically last week, and after a warm time with even some rain, it started to cool down again. Temperatures in the morning went well below -20°C and that was quite a change with the temperatures I experienced the week before, in Portugal… Because of the cold temperatures the owls had changed their behaviour a bit, so we had to find out how they were hunting now, and where other owls could be found. But our Finnature guide, Antti Vierimaa gave us a lot of hope, and was a great help with finding ànd photographing the birds. Really great to see motivated people like Antti, gives you a lot of good spirit! Even when it’s -20°C and snow is more than one meter deep I think we can even now correctly pronounce Lapinpöllö, the Finnish word for Great grey owl… What a language!

Although I had my new Nikon D4 with me in Portugal to photograph the Great bustards, I knew this was the time to test it on the AF-speed and resolution. Also Ben had his just out of the box D4 with him, and combined with our D3s, D3x and D300s we could see the benefits of our new camera after several thousands of shots of the owls, posing and flying in all sorts of conditions. Coming home and editing pictures had never been this fun, with such a high ‘keepers’ rate, making it actually more difficult to select…If you can get your hands on one, go for it! If you can at least, because we seemed to be one of the first ones to get a camera (thanks NPS Belgium , and there is a big demand for this new camera…

If you want to photograph Great grey owls too some day, contact Finnature or join my waiting list on Tierra Photo Tours. You will be contacted when the owls are easy to find and to photograph, and we will travel in a small group. It’s a wonderful experience!

All pictures are taken within four days in the Ounasjoki valley close to Rovaniemi, with Nikon D4, D3x, D3s, D300s combined with 600mm F4 VR, 70-200mm VRII, 200-400mm VRI, and converters 1.4x and 2x. This was only possible with the great help of Antti, so thanks Antti!

Have a look at my ‘Behind the scenes‘ gallery to see some action shots to have an idea of the ‘making of’.

Here are some aerial pictures I took last week.

So I didn’t think long when I got the opportunity to photograph the Black woodpeckers from a hide in northern Finland. Together with my friend Bas we spent 5 days in a little hide in an ancient boreal forest, a few kilometers away from the road (yep, snowshoe exercise every morning and evening). We had all the light conditions we could hope for: cloudy, sunny, snowing, wind,…
We were able to photograph the male and the female Black woodpecker, calling each time before they arrived. And we had some really nice time with other birds too, like Grey Headed woodpeckers, Crested tits, Siberian tits, Siberian Jays,…No rest at all during those five days! Hope to show some more of these next time!

I will try to organise a trip to Finland again next year to go back to these Black woodpeckers and other things, and some photographers can join me, I will announce that on my www.tierraphototours.be website (but if you can’t wait, give me a message!).

Some ‘behind the scene shots’ from my trip to Bulgaria and Greece are here.

I will guide a photo-tour to Bulgaria and Greece next year in February, have a look at the Tierra Photo Tours website!

Well, I had set a period for this trip earlier in the winter, with the hope of also to have some chances with the amazing Red-Breasted Geese, that winters along the coast of the Black sea. Almost the whole world population, that are rapidly decreasing and becoming a threatened species, are staying in one area in Bulgaria, at Durankulak and Shabla region close to the border of Romania.

But when I got closer to my departure date, it soon was obvious no geese had arrived yet in Bulgaria because of the warm winter at that time. So I had already prepared alternative plans with my local guides Miro and Emil, from Cometobg, and was already looking forward to that! But at the time I actually travelled to Bulgaria, the geese decided to start travelling too! During my first days in Bulgaria numbers of Red-Breasted geese quickly rised, but also the snow (and wind) decided to arrive massively. Because of that many roads were blocked and it was impossible to travel trough the country, without the risk of getting stuck all the time and loose lots of good time. Every day was very exciting to see how the weather evolved, but we managed to keep us very busy, despite of the troubles caused by the weather. We had lots of good times at the Kerkini Lake in Greece with the Dalmatian pelicans (more about that later!), at a very nice winter feeding station for small birds (with an amazing species list of 25 and with some of them in very high numbers), at the Golden eagle station in the mountains, at a roosting site with Long-eared owls, stunning landscapes,…

During those days we received lots of news about the geese at the other side of the country, but my departure date was also getting closer…I realized I couldn’t go home yet, and when I saw on the local TV that roads were starting to get open again, I took the chance and booked a later return-flight. And that was a good decision! When we finally arrived at the Black Sea coast the geese were awaiting us…just at the side of the road! Researchers, birdwatchers and local photographers hadn’t seen this spectacle before! We managed to photograph the geese at a stunning 10 meter distance just sitting on the side the road! Even the White fronted geese didn’t seem to mind, and just grazed in front of us, with no hide canvas, car, bush,…between us. Very strange experience! But this is how it should be, what a great time that was! When we heard locals saying that many foreign photographers tried to photograph the geese before but without any luck, we knew we were very fortunate with these conditions. The reasons why the geese were so calm and accepted our presence at this distance are not clear, some say it was because they had arrived just after the hunting season and were not stressed, or they needed the cover from the road to get out of the wind,…We also managed to photograph the daily flights to the Black Sea to drink and wash. Normally they do this too far away from the shore, but now they splashed in the water just in front of us!

Anyhow, this was also the unique chance to catch some geese to put a satellite transmitter on. So we witnessed the first Red-Breasted goose ever wearing a GPS, and will hopefully provide us with lots of data and will reach his breeding grounds in Taimyr…where I hopefully will arrive too one day, at the right time that is!

Thanks for the great company John, Miro and Emil!