Sweden Day 4 Marshlands

I felt very much at home in the Kvismare Valley as the landscape is like our East Anglian Fens and many of the birds would be those seen there - Marsh Harrier, Heron, Tree Sparrow and hunting Peregrine. But the abundant Cranes and White-tailed  Eagles made the area special to Sweden. We even found a tree that had been gnawed by Beavers. The shrew was very small and thought to be a Pygmy Shrew

Sorby Sateri 17th Century Accomodation in Sweden

This is the house that we stayed in when visiting the Kvismare Valley. It is near the town of Orebro. Very impressive interiors including a large oil painting of Much Ado About Nothing and large ornamental wood burning stoves in all the rooms. We ate with our host and hostess in a magnificent dining room. Our bedrooms were less impressive in the stable block! 

Kvismare Bird Ringing Station, Sweden

After watching the Crane fly-out, we visited the Bird Ringing station to see what activity there was. We were lucky to be able to study a Bluethroat close-up and a Red Backed Shrike. Many Bluethroats have been ringed in Sweden in the autumn and recovered in Eastern Europe very  slightly later but no winter recoveries have ever been reported so there is still no information where this species spends the winter. 

We were also shown a Marsh Warbler, a species very close to the Reed Warbler (except in song), identified either by the length of the notch on the wing or by the ratio of beak length to diameter.

Sweden - Clear Night and Perfect Dawn

As the night was a clear one, I used the fisheye to record the stars - it wasn't as dark a sky as I expected as the town was quite close but I still managed an image of the Milky Way.

The fourth day in Sweden dawned clear and colourful and we watched the cranes fly out from their roost. The sky gradually changed from pin to orange to yellow as the sun rose.

Sweden Farna Ekopark and Kvismare Valley

After walking in the forest, we visited a lake and were delighted to find a party of five Black Throated divers. After an early supper at our new lodgings, we went to a hide that overlooked the Kvismare Valley to watch the Cranes flying in. Soon they were arriving  by the wind pumps, together with tumbling Greylags, some Whooper Swans and a pair of White-tailed Eagles.

Getting Wet at Lee Valley Slalom Championships

We planned a return visit to the Lee Valley Whitewater centre before we realised that the British Canoe championships started today.  We had a very good morning photographing the competitors going through their qualifying rounds. I tried both fast shutterspeeds (1/1600 or 1/2000th) and slower speeds (1/60th and 1/80th)to get different effects. The light was very limited and flat but I am quite pleased with some of the action portraits. The rain started around lunchtime so we decided the morning had generated enough images to work on.