Animals of Prague II.
Even though Prague is quite a big city, it is not just concrete, asphalt and stone. On the contrary, there are plenty of parks and other green places, where animals, that are used to human presence, can thrive. In this post I present to you some photographs I took in Letná Park and Stromovka (Royal Game Reserve) on two different occasions.
The first three photos I took in Letná Park which I was originally just passing through on my way to National technical museum in mid August. Well, being me, my plans quickly changed when I saw the first birds, which made me to change from wide lens to telephoto. And when I saw the first squirrels, my desire to educate myself in museum was way gone and I turned from a tourist into a local weirdo looking up the tree branches for few hours, while my telephoto lens attracted an unwanted attention of other visitors.
I was a bit surprised how diverse the local wildlife was. Many magpies, nuthatches, woodpeckers were a real treat for my eyes. However, the squirrel on the second picture really caught my attention and I spent about an hour watching it feeding itself on elm tree seeds. Squirrels are master acrobats and it is a real joy to watch them from up close. However, even something like domestic pigeon might look pretty interesting. The one on the third photo really stood out among the others by its colors which nicely complemented the fallen leaves on the ground giving the picture pleasant warm mood.
The rest of the picture were taken in Stromovka in the beginning of September. It was my first visit there and if Letná Park surprised me by its wildlife, Stromovka pretty much stunned me. It is quite large park with several artificial lakes and streams hosting variety of birds (I even saw a kingfisher there). I just strolled around the park for several hours during which I met lots of different species. The first one was an Eurasian nuthatch. It is not a rare bird, however, to take nice picture of it is not as easy as it might seem. It usually moves around a lot, so it takes some patience to wait for a good moment when they decide to pose in a good light. When not seen, they can be even mistaken for a woodpecker, since they also use their beaks to bash against a bark and extract food from it.
After that I spent some time in a company of a Eurasian magpie. Magpies are very intelligent birds and it was pretty clear that the interest was mutual. I would really love to know what was going on behind those eyes, when it was looking at me thoughtfully. Most peculiar encounter of the day, however, was with a species I have never seen before: common moorhen. This bird seems to me like mix of hen, duck and pigeon. Not only it swims on the water, but can run fast on the land as well. When they run, there is almost something prehistoric in their movement reminding me velociraptors from the Jurassic park movie. Other than that I had an opportunity to photograph Eurasian coot, which was remarkably fearless and let me get about 3 metres from it, and Eurasian jay.
In places like this you don’t really need to use any special techniques to see plenty of beautiful animals. You only need to be focused, patient and observant. I f you don’t believe me, just go out to your local park and see for yourselves.
