AlpenglowJoin me learning Nature Photography

The Bavarian Bird Conservation society LBV organizes once per year a winter “bird census” – everybody is invited to participate: Go out, and for one hour count the birds in your backyard, nearby park, inner city area.. and report the results back. They will publish the result of all this counting on January 20, and it will be interesting to see which birds make their way into this millenium and which struggle to survive. I do not know if there will be any concrete actions taken based on the result of the survey, but certainly it raises the awareness of what is going on in the bird populations around us.

Now, I have never participated in a bird census before and this sounded like a lot of fun, so I did a trial run yesterday (to do away this nervousness ), and did this morning my one hour count, already reported back to the Munich division of the LBV. They allow for doing this online now – smart move, avoids having to enter all the data manually by them…

The rules are actually simple: Take one hour, and count the birds you see. The only trick is to count per species only the birds you can see concurrently, in the same moment, so you don’t count the same individual twice (or more, given the speed the little critters dash around).

So here is my final count after this mornings nice but cold walk along the Isar river.

1. Blackbird – one. They actually don’t stay close to the river, but are found in the gardens next to it.
2. Great Spotted Woodpecker – one. There are plenty of them, I think, but you seldom see more than one at the same time (well, maybe it’s always the same )
3. Nuthatch – one.
4. Goldcrest – one. This I indentified only by it’s song – but that was rather easy as I had seen two of them (and heard) on my trial run yesterday at the same spot. Today I couldn’t see it, small as they are.
5. Grey Wagtail – one. I didn’t knew these were around in winter as well, but I had a very long and good look on this one, so I am sure it wasn’t a White Wagtail.
6. Short-toed Treecreepers – two. Actually I didn’t manage to measure it’s toe, but given the likeliness and the type of the habitat I vote for the short-toed version today.
7. Great Tits – Five. At least. And they were around everywhere. This bird also “won” the bird census last year, and I am sure it will win again. Amazing adaptability to our civilization.
8. Rooks – Two. Yesterday, there were at least one hundred flying south-west. I am sure it’s the cold that brings them down from the East. We had one of the coldest nights of the year yesterday, down to -12° centigrade. That’s about 10° F.
9. Wren – Two. I read those did leave Bavaria in the winter, back some 10 years ago. Now some of them stay. But why is it called “Winter Wren” then ?
10. Marsh Tits – Two. Well, that was a very quick encounter, and of course it could have been Willow Tits (or, given the dim light, Coal Tits). But reading the descriptions in my Svensson again, I vote for Marsh Tit having the highest likelihood.

Those were the birds officially listed on the survey’s check list. In addition, I could report

1. Little Grebe – Two.
2. Common Goldeneyes – Four.
3. Coots – 32! Gosh, this was the largest coot invasion I had seen so far on the river. They usually like to stay on the Kleinhesseloher Lake in the English Garden, but it seems as the water level in the Isar is as low as I have ever seen, they can find food now also in the very fast running river.

I didn’t report (because they didn’t ask for) the all too common (are they?)

1. Mute Swans – 6.
2. Mallards – 8.

Yesterday, but not today, I did see

1. Blue Tits – 2.
2. Mandarin Ducks – 16. This flock probably was more downriver today, but I didn’t get that far as my time was limited to the one hour.
3. Moorhen – 1. This was a first for me at least on the Isar river. It was quietly picking it’s way on the opposite shore, and seen by me only by coincidence as I counted the Mandarins – and arrived add an odd number, which is odd, because the always come in pairs So one of the female Mandarins actually was the Moorhen, as I found to my excitement recounting the ducks.
4. White-Throated Dipper – 1. Cool! This was the first Dipper I saw on the Isar within the city boundaries. The only one I had seen before was way downstream outside of the city. Back then, I actually was able to make a nice photo of him. Is this a success of the renaturation of the river as propagated by the Isar Alliance? Maybe, probably.


Now, today I didn’t take a camera with me because I wanted to do a good job counting – did I miss a photo opportunity? I don’t think so, as we had a grey overcast sky and the light was very dim. I have tried making photos on days like this before, but the pictures do lack color in the first place, in addition to having either a very high ISO (making the lack of color not better…) or blurred images due to long shutter speeds. I certainly didn’t miss a keeper today.