More spring now!

Friday started out promising enough, but by the end of the day we had snow and strong winds once more. This week looks good too, but according to the weather service it will get cold again in a couple of days. I know it's still March, but I'm really longing for a definite change in season. A final push and a great swing towards summer! I guess everything will be different in just three weeks.


We still do some birding, but it's mostly around the neighborhood. For everything else it seems better to wait a couple of weeks.


Bird of the day:
Vigg -- Reiherente -- Tufted duck -- Fuligule morillon -- Aythya fuligula

Backlash

Well, no sooner had I written "Practically all snow is gone by now" yesterday when it started to snow. This morning the world was white again and winter was temporarily back. It wasn't really the thing I was hoping for, but I guess it's March for you.

Walking home yesterday from a short walk around Aspudden and Vinterviken I looked up and spotted a White-tailed Eagle circling above. It's always a great sight and I was also pleasantly surprised to find what looked like a Sparrowhawk circling nearby its big relative.


Bird of the day:
White-tailed Eagle -- Havsörn -- Seeadler -- Pygargue à queue blanche -- Haliaeetus albicilla

Still no spring

... but it is definitely around the corner. Practically all snow is gone by now and temperatures are steadily above zero, but we still see no green sprouts and very few migratory birds have arrived. For the impatient it is taking forever.

We've been taking walks and I have brought the camera along. The D300 is definitely a magnitude better than the old D70s, but ISO noise is still an issue. It is not as bad as the old camera, but shooting over ISO 1000 produces a noisy image with lack of detail as a result.


Bird of the day:
Storskrake -- Gänsesäger -- Common merganser/Goosander -- Grand Harle -- Mergus merganser

New equipment!

The global financial downturn has hit the Swedish currency hard. It has dropped in excess of 20% in just two and a half months. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that prices on imported goods will raise and so I realized that if I ever was going to upgrade my camera, now was the time to do it. The decision was made even easier when I read that Nikon has announced a general increase in prices of 10 - 30%.

The combined pieces of information led me to order a new camera last week, so I am now the happy owner of a brand new Nikon D300! Compared to the old Nikon D70s it is a significant improvement. It is however also bulkier and I believe that the battery time doesn't come close to that of the D70s, where I have never run out of battery, including the entire mountain trek last summer.

Overall it's a fantastic camera and I am eager to give it a decent try in the field. For now I have only made a couple of photos, including the Common Merganser below (which has also received a small overdose of Photoshop enthusiasm...).



Bird of the day:
Storskrake -- Gänsesäger -- Common merganser/Goosander -- Grand Harle -- Mergus merganser

They say it's spring

Please tell us more about it, 'cause it's for sure not around here!

I was reading yesterday how Odysseas is enjoying the flowers of spring and about Laura going birding, enjoying daylight saving time already! It's nice to know spring is around the corner, but it is sure enough taking it's time. Today was fairly mild, but that didn't prevent a full day of snowing.

To contrast the spring stories I went down town over lunch and snapped a few quick ones of the house sparrows. I followed up by taking a picture of the tree below, coming home from work. As you can see we are in no urgent need of daylight saving time. There is simply no light to save yet!





Bird of the day: Gråsparv -- Haussperling -- House Sparrow -- Moineau domestique -- Passer domesticus

Yellowhammer, Norra Järvafältet

Yesterday I took a walk in Norra Järvafältet again, one of our favourite nature reserves around Stockholm. Right now everything here is covered in snow and in the sunshine nature looks just amazing! I stopped a while to look for the yellow-browed bunting but it was nowhere to be seen. It seems to get increasingly harder to get a glimpse of Järvafältet's star visitor. Instead I heard a few goldfinches and saw numerous yellowhammers... One of them was cooperative and posed a little:


Bird of the day:
Gulsparv -- Goldammer -- Yellowhammer -- Bruant jaune -- Emberiza citrinella