CRANES FROM HORNBORNGASJON
Couple days ago me, Rosťa Stach and few other friends returned from southern Sweden, particularly from the Hornborngasjon lake. Large flocks of cranes gather here at this time every year and it is certainly an amazing sight. Cranes always fly in here before their nesting period and there are thousands of them. At the time of our stay there was approximately 12 400 cranes in the area. Visitors of the lake can find out the information about current numeration of cranes on local information board, which is daily updated. Counting of birds takes place every evening, when the birds fly to overnight on the lake. They move there in smaller flocks and the removal lasts approximately an hour. At the time of sunrise the birds comeback to the, which surround the lake and so it is possible to watch them there easily.
One of the biggest problems while photographing cranes in this place is their great amount. To separate one crane from a thousand members flock is sometimes really difficult.
I was partly saved of this problem thanks to Czech representation of the company Canon, which borrowed me object-lens Canon EF 800mm F/5,6 L IS USM. This way I was able to zoom the birds perfectly. I think that to name all positives and negatives of this object-lens is completely pointless. This is simply great! Perfect design and possibility to photograph even very long-distance objects makes it excellent object-lens mainly for those photographers specialized in bird’s photography. I knot only about one disadvantage of this product. Its price is also „great“!
Unfortunately we were not so lucky for weather. Constantly cloudy sky, which had been sunny only for one hour on Thursday morning, did not give us many chances to make wonderful pictures. However finally I managed to shoot few good photos. When Rosťa and Martin later gave a short interview for Swedish television, we could leave Hornborngasjon Lake with a feeling, that even though it did not happen the way we wished due to bad weather, we at least have a reason to comeback here in the future.
