Close range winter encounters

At lake Råstasjön, close to where I live, a lot of birds rely on being fed by the locals to survive. The lake is known for its wintering population of 60-80 Grey Herons and the nationally famous resident Water Rail(s, though this year it only seems to be one indiviual). Other rare winter birds such as Moorhen, Winter Wren and Robin are also taking advantage of the conditions together with the more common wintering species like Common Redpoll, Eurasian Nuthatch, Blackbird and several tit species.

The past Friday I walked around the lake with my 70-200 mm lens and today I brought a 24-70 mm lens with a remote trigger to get some different angles of the birds while giving them some food to stack up during the coldest time of the year as the temperatures have been down to -16 C the past week.

Unfortunately the rail didn’t show up today when I brought the remote trigger so I spent an hour with the local herons instead. The results came out pretty good as one heron kept on protecting its feeding area against any other herons, the only issue was that 25 Mallards kept running around on the ice as soon as I threw out anything for the birds to eat. Eventually I was able to grab some shots of the heron alone, and the shots came out pretty cool with the National Soccer Stadium in the background with a nice blue and grey sky by using a toned lens filter.