Rooks - de råkada bara vara där

My actual plan today was to bike to "Falckensteiner Strand", a beach North of Kiel, enjoy the sunshine (it's kind of rare here!) and take som pictures of the birds I happen to encounter.
Well, I had only biked 500 m along Kiel's busiest street, the "Westring", when I saw several rooks foraging on the traffic island in the middle on the street... and well, I never got to Falckensteiner Strand.



While I was standing there, the call of a kestrel suddenly caught my ear - and yes, indeed, there was a common kestrel being mobbed and chased by this flock of rooks. Wouldn't want to change place with that guy. :-) Unfortunately what the ear and the eye caught, the camera did not... or in other words, don't look for the kestrel on the pic below.


For the record: It's not like I biked 500m and that was it - I actually made it to Kiel airport which is situated about 7 km North of Kiel, but by then it was 5:30 pm and I had to head back because my bike light needs new batteries... Sunset here is at 6:20 pm by the way. On my way I passed the Kiel Canal (Nord-Ostsee-Kanal in German), the 98 km long canal linking the North Sea to the Baltic Sea. The district Kiel-Holtenau is situated at the Baltic Sea entrance.


Bird of the day:
Rook -- Råka -- Saatkrähe -- Corbeau freux -- Corvus frugilegus

Winter wren, Schrevenpark

One of many many winter wrens in Kiel. This one was photographed in Schrevenpark, 20th September. As I said before, they are all over the place, although now they are less conspicuous, because they only rarely take to singing nowadays. Still, often enough they utter their characteristic staccato call, and that's how we found this one.


Bird of the day:
Gärdsmyg -- Zaunkönig -- Winter Wren -- Troglodyte mignon -- Winterkoning (NL) -- Troglodytes troglodytes