Austrian vacation

It has been a while since my last post, so this time I decided to make up for that a bit. This summer I spent a vacation with my wife in our favorite destination of St. Wolfgang in Austria with its beautiful lake Wolfgangsee. It is just about three and half hours drive from our home, but it holds so much more than many more famous and more exotic destinations. The fusion of crystal clear water, rocky mountains and woods is just extraordinary! That is just our kind of perfect vacation…

Everything around here is connected to nature. Even in our hotel we could watch wildlife from the balcony. There was a nest of blackbirds right next to it and there was also a little pond with frogs right next to the building. Actually the frogs were pretty loud during the evenings, but it was part of a charm of the place, so I am not complaining.

The mountains in this area are mostly covered by deep woods with occasional patches of pastures. And of course there is a lot of wildlife. I did not really have much time to actually look for it, however, I ran into some photographic opportunities anyway. Some of the animals have it harder to run away, though. At first I tried to photograph this snail with my Sony 200-600 mm lens, but its minimal focus distance is not that great, so I switched to Sony 20 mm fixed lens, which flexes some decent (semi)macro capability. It is not very usual to have time to switch lenses in wildlife photography once you start shooting the subject, but than again - the snail could hardly flee from me.

During our hike through the woods I was lucky enough to come across this yellow-necked mouse. In fact, there was a whole bunch of them (I mean in the woods, not together), but this one was brave enough to pose as a model for me. It was really careful, but also curious. And after a while it kind of understood, that we pose no threat to it. And another moment later it decided it has some more important business to do and hopped away.

On the southern part of the lake by the town of Strobl there is a national reservation called Moosbach. It is a picturesque piece of land stretching along the lake’s shore. Perfect for a small stroll.

And it was in Moosbach, where we met an extraordinary group of coots and mallards. They were obviously used to being near humans and it almost seemed like they enjoyed being photographed. By the way, I think that I have never actually taken a picture of a young coot before it got its typical black and white colors. There’s a first for everything, I guess, and I am happy for every “first time” I can get in wildlife photography.

Coots were nice, but these mallards really stole the show! They were “teenagers” - already having adult colors, but still under constant surveillance of their mum nearby. They just looked like a newly formed boyband on their first photoshoot for their album cover.

Still in Moosbach but little further away, we bumped into small ponds and marshes, where we found another frog (European fire-bellied toad? Not sure.)…

…but more importantly more mallards. This time young ducklings still in baby colors with their mum. These were much more careful and kept their distance. But hey, how awesome were they! Cuteness overload initiated!

Overall, the whole trip was just great and we will surely come back again. See you later, Wolfgangsee!

P. S. I cannot neglect to mention, that the whole area is pretty awesome for astrophotography due to its low light pollution. However, I did not focus on that this time. So there you are just a quick “snapshot” of the local night sky…

Holedná game reserve

Perfect score