Time for the birds of Scheveningen

Birds

13 Feb

I regularly stumble across interesting bird observations in the harbor of Scheveningen. Since the harbor is quite easily reached with public transport (I neither own a car nor a bike), I have decided to go there more often. And so I did this past wednesday. The photos are below.

On a sidenote: I do still love to wander long distances (20-25km) through e.g. the Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen, but these days are often very — very — tiring. That, luckily, is not the case with going to the Scheveningen harbor, so going there then becomes much more attractive.

Razorbill / Alca torda — Razorbill / *Alca torda*

This day started off really nice when it turned out a Razorbill was in the harbor. What a beautiful bird! Unfortunately the light came from the wrong direction, so its eye — which is naturally very dark — is almost impossible to see on the photos. I shouldn't complain, though, as the bird was relatively close to me.

After following the bird for around 15 minutes, it decided to leave the harbor and go back to open waters. After just a few dives it already had disappeared from view.

Afterwards, a Great cormorant (carbo carbo), a subspecies of the ‘common’ Cormorant (carbo), finally flew plast me. Most of the time I could see it in a group of other (common) Cormorants, where it is near impossible to photograph in a nice manner. Unfortunately it was already quite dark, so the picture is not as sharp as I woud like, but it perfectly serves as an evidence shot.

Great cormorant / Phalacrocorax carbo carbo — Great cormorant / *Phalacrocorax carbo carbo*

The weather turned really bad afterwards, but that proved to be a nice occasion to photograph the Ruddy turnstones. Usually they already come very close to you, but when the weather is bad they seem to have even less of an issue with being close. One of the birds even started washing less than 30 cm from me and managed to splash water in my face. Those are the priceless moments that totally make up for being soaked and covered in sand. I did not, however, manage to take photos of this particular bird, as a 600mm lens that can focus at such short distances is — unfortunately — still to be invented.