Austrian Birds

Our Easter trip to Graz turned up a few birds that were new to us.

Blackcap:

blackcap

Despite the odd appearance, I suspect that this happy little chap is a mallard underneath:

weirdduck

The river provided goosanders:

goosander

And, very excitingly, a dipper, dipping in the middle of town:

dipper

Schloss Eggenberg was mainly notable for its peacocks:

peacocktree

peacock peacockpicturepeahenpeahen2

Honourable mention also for the squirrels:

squirrel

Our latest trip to Marchegg was similarly productive. This (probably pied) flycatcher prompted us to brake our bikes rather sharply: flycatcher

We saw our first kingfisher of the year, albeit from quite a distance:

kingfisher

The real finds of this outing were the raptors, however. My first sparrowhawk (fairly sure):

sparrowhawk

This white-tailed eagle was hunting ducks (or at least scaring the daylights out of them):

whitetailed

Meanwhile a red kite was hanging around, perhaps hoping that something would come his way:

redkite

This imperial eagle sauntered over us:

imperialeagle The (marsh?) harrier was out hunting, making the hares very nervous: marshharrier

The stork colony in Marchegg is starting to fill up; around 15 pairs (out of 50ish) have already nabbed the best nests (generally the higher ones). We saw several stealing material from empty nests:

storktwigThen they got down to business:

storkshag

The village has taken its occasional residents to heart:  storkslide

storkface

Our “own” pair are ahead of the game again, and are already incubating eggs. Newly returned birds are still on the lookout for nests, so there’s defending to be done:

storksmantling

And after all that sitting, there’s nothing like a damn good stretch:storkstretch

 

 

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One Response to Austrian Birds

  1. Flora Alexander says:

    Brilliant pictures – especially the peacocks and raptors.
    Dippers go dipping in Pitlochry, you know!

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