An afternoon in the moor

I spent an afternoon in the moor near Ibm in Austria again - now is the time of the year when the curlew sings its wailing song. An old german name of that bird is "Moorflöte" (moor flute). Unfortunately, I don't know which curlew exactly it is. When one bird starts singing, others join in and its a magical and melancholic ambience for me as the birds fly, singing their song (and I do remember now that some of the electronic sound effects in my song "A Landscape" where inspired by the song of the curlew). There are also some peewits around, I like them very much too - they always fly as if they are tumbling through the air, and their sounds are very funny too.

I walked up a small hill to get an overview of the area, but the afternoon light was not very good. Thats why the photo below is black & white - I like the scenery, but to bring out its original quality in the photo required too much post processing - and the result was just ugly in color.


Afternoon above the moor

I can certainly understand why landscape photographers prefer morning and evening light. I have to teach my dog to change his pooping schedule. :-)

Up on the hill there was a pheasant nearby, but 300mm focal length was nowhere near enough to get a good photo - this is already a crop to about 2/3 of the original size of the frame:


Pheasant

I waited patiently for him to make his call, because thats when he fluffs up his feathers for a moment, but I gave up after a while and screwed in the polarizing filter for some landscape shots - and as soon as I did that, he of course shouted (and the exposure times are just too long with the polarizer). Well, maybe I'm not a bird photographer. I think I can handle that.

And last not least, today I managed to get back home without injuries and biting the dust. :-)