My pictures of 2021 are characterized by animals, photographed directly in our garden, in the harbor La Pichette, during dog walks in the vicinity and in Grimentz. Thus, it is also said that I could not make any foreign trips in 2021, let alone a safari in Botswana.
A small spider weaving its web, a young hedgehog in the middle of the forest, bees at work on lavender flowers and watching a wide variety of birds, nature offers all this, I just had to open my eyes and point the camera.
So this collection of my favorite images of 2021 consists of more or less everyday encounters, plus some landscapes and long exposures.
For each picture you will find the information when the picture was taken and which equipment with which settings I used. Click on a picture and you see it bigger, click again on the picture and you see it in original size. With the browser button “back to previous page” you come back to this entry.
Great Crested Grebe Family
I followed this Great Crested Grebe family for several months until the young birds were so large that I could no longer distinguish them from adults.
The parent birds have built the nest virtually swimming on a buoy right next to my sailboat in the harbour La Pichette. The first photos I made with my iPhone, but then I took each time my big camera. Often I went to the harbour just to watch the grebes.
With time I had the impression that the birds got used to me. They showed me the eggs in the nest, then the hatched fledglings and later each time the whole family, the two parents and three fledglings came near me. I never fed the animals, always had a camera with a large lens pointed at them and yet they showed no fear of me, on the contrary, a certain familiarity developed.
For me, the series of Great Crested Grebe images is very special.
A first journal entry on the nest building and eggs laid can be seen here.
Journal entry with the first pictures of the young birds.
There are more pictures in this journal entry and also in this other journal entry.
I took more pictures in early August, which can be seen in this journal entry.
At the end of August you can see how much the young birds have already grown. It is nice to see that the parents did not have to cope with any losses. The three hatched young birds are still in the best of health.
More pictures from this visit can be seen in this journal entry.
I wrote a separate entry in my journal about this last picture.
After that I lose track of the young birds. I have the impression that the bird on the left in the previous picture is one of the now adult fledglings, but I am by no means sure. In any case, it was a lot of fun to watch these birds over a longer period of time.
More bird pictures taken in La Pichette
During my first attempts with new camera settings to photograph birds in flight, I managed this lucky shot. More pictures of this series can be seen in their own journal entry.
A short time later I was able to observe these two seagulls on one of the light poles at the harbor entrance. I have written a separate journal entry about this as well.
Water birds photographed in Morges
I was able to photograph both the Cormorant and the Great Crested Grebe shortly after they emerged. I saw the birds dive off and just hoped that they would reappear in about the same place. With the Great Crested Grebe this worked out quite well, the Cormorant surfaced further away and was already arranging its wings again until I could capture it again with the camera.
Birds in garden or photographed from garden
Actually, it has too many crows, they hunt and drive away other bird species. Nevertheless, they themselves are fascinating birds, large, noisy and very dominant. They like to use our bird baths, if only to soften bread they received from neighbors, to eat it more easily.
We are regularly overflown by buzzards. Coincidentally, I was able to photograph the aerial encounter of these two buzzards. I was standing on our terrace with my camera in my hands because I was watching birds in the garden when these two birds of prey flew overhead. The two birds came from opposite directions and flew their ways unperturbed after this encounter.
There are more pictures of this encounter in this journal entry.
The following photos show birds in our garden. The variety of species is not overwhelming, but still beautiful. You can see redstart, goldfinch, greenfinch, pied flycatcher, sparrows, blue tits and great tits.
Other animals from our garden
At the beginning of summer it is always nice to see how insects, in this case bees, go about their work. As small as these animals are, as beautiful it is to see them enlarged on a photo. Countless details can only be recognized on these enlargements.
This spider is about 5 mm in size. Fascinating to observe the speed at which she built her web between two railing posts on our terrace.
A rare guest ? I do not know, in any case we saw this toad only once, moved it a little away from the house so that it was no longer in the danger zone of the blinds.
Fili and Hobbit
Our two Picardy shepherds are a very important part of our lives. Not only at home and in the garden they offer a lot of action, they also force us to do something with them every day. During the week Sabine does the walks with them, on the weekend we set off together.
If there is one car that our Picards love, it is my Defender. Here they really show their joy when the tailgate is opened and they can hardly wait to jump in. The soft top allows pleasant air currents during the ride and when they yelp at someone they are also quite sure that the person in question, be it pedestrians, cyclists or motorcyclists, is really scared.
Animal encounters during dog walks
Our dogs scented the little hedgehog but surprisingly didn’t show much interest in him. He stayed quite calm when I approached with the camera and put the camera on the ground directly in front of him to have a special viewing angle. The hedgehog made a healthy and uninjured impression. There are more pictures in this journal entry.
I was able to photograph these birds of prey during our vacation at Lake Hallwil. There are more photos of these fascinating birds in this journal entry.
I could observe jays and pine jays in Grimentz and with a little luck also photograph them. In this journal entry there are more photos of birds from Grimentz
La Garenne
While we couldn’t do a safari, we wanted to practice some animal photography and there’s nothing better than visiting a zoo or animal park. Above Gland, there is the La Garenne sanctuary, which also houses a zoo. Together with Tobias we visited the zoo for the first time in August. There are pictures of it in this journal entry.
In December we visited La Garenne another time. This time it was really winter, it had snowed and all the enclosures had been transformed into a winter landscape. The pictures of the wolves in the snow remain unforgotten. Also from this visit there are journal entries, about wolves, lynxes and other animals, about birds, about a red kite and about owls.
Various landscape images
Chapel of the municipality of Stoos, taken at almost full moon. There are more shots in this series in this journal entry.
It is not very often that Lake Geneva is under a sea of fog, on this day it was the case. With the dogs, we took a long walk from Saudannes up to the ridge that gave us this view over Lake Geneva. Exact backlight to photograph did not simplify matters, but beautiful it was in any case.
This picture is composed of 7 single shots, each with 3.2 seconds exposure time, as small aperture as possible, I do not want to have ND filters available. At times the traffic was stationary, at times it ran smoothly. Therefore, certain vehicles are well recognizable, while from others only luminous stripes testify. There are more shots in this series in this journal entry.
Freshly snowed Rocher de Naye photographed directly from my office window.
This beautiful sunset really shows off the Dents du Midi. Taken from our terrace in Corseaux.
A sunrise is reflected on the top floor of our office building in Vouvry.
Thank you very much for your interest and for sticking it out this far.
