Jari Peltomäki - Lake Kerkini, Greece IX

Day 9. Lake Kerkini, Macedonia, Greece.

Today was only my second bright morning at Lake Kerkini! The night was cold and there was frost on the ground in places. I managed to find just some fairly distant Pelicans as a foreground for my sunrise images.  Drove around the lake today and saw some good birds; 2-3 Spotted Eagles, Great Grey Shrike, Smew, 12 Black-necked Grebes and a flock of about 200 dark Anser Geese, probably White-fronted Geese? I wonder if Lesser White-fronted Geese were in that flock? Lake Kerkini is a famous place where the small European population of this endangered species is spending part of their winter, before they move to the Evros delta.

Had another boattrip to the Strymonas river delta and took some more photographs of Great Cormorants and some more Dalmatian Pelicans. That river delta is a truly wonderful place for birds! The boatman was telling me that I should come back in May or June, apparently then the delta will be full of breeding Egrets and Herons! In Europe there are so many great places for wildlife and this is definitely one of those places!

In the afternoon I went to meet fisherman Tom, and this time he managed to attract many Pelicans at his shore. It was really nice to see how Pelicans, which were just flying over, immediately landed by Tom’s shore when he was throwing fish out from his boat. Today I also got on his boat, but then unfortunately the Pelicans didn´t come quite so close as last week. However, I got some nice images of fisherman Tom and his Pelicans!

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