Birds and bugs at (and near) the drowned forest.

Today I spent the day with my girls at a lake beach of a lake connected to the Lek river close to my hometown. I took my camera to take some pictures of my girls, but both at the lake and later on our way home there were quite a few opportunities to practice animal photography.

It started out a bit disappointing. This dragonfly was dancing with its partner over the lake surface, but they were just to quick and to agile for my still limited photography skills. I would have loved to capture the two of them in flight, but unfortunately, this is the only picture I managed to get off one of them.

But then these little fish came and changed things. Again very hard to photograph through the glintering surface of the water, especialy given their camouflage. If it wasn't for their outspoken shadow on this sunny day, I probably wouldn't even have spotted them. The little fish attracted a common tern.

On our way back, on our bicicles, we came through a little park named The drowned forest.

One of my doughters was a bit tired cycling, so we paused at the park for a bit, and I had a few more opportunities to make some animal photos.

The first bird I spotted was this coot with its, rather homley, chick.

Then a plain duck and, to my surprise, a dragonfly that I hadn't even spotted when I took the picture.

Then this haron landed. I tried to see where it landed but wasn't able to spot it again. Then I thought I spotted an other haron up above.

But to my surprise, it turned out not to be a haron at all.

A white stork. While herons are very comon where I live, white storks arent exactly every day sightings, so I was happy that using the zoom of my camera I at least got a semi-decent picture of it.

The last two photos I took were a bit closer to the ground again and a bit closer. A little pond scater.

And finaly this bee

Today really tought me that I should take my camera with me more often. I wasn't planing on doing any animal photography today. I just took my camera to make pictures of my girls. Eventhough I didn't take my monopod, something I would have done if I had set out to photograph birds, I think most of these above pictures turned out quite decent.