Jari Peltomäki - Texel, The Netherlands

Day 1, Texel

After an early departure from Oulu, Finland, I arrived to the island of Texel in the Netherlands in the afternoon. My first impression on the ferry from mainland to the island was – wow, it´s crowded here!
However, my impression changed when I got on to the island. Despite the large number of people on the ferry they seemed to spread around the island very well. No wonder that this is such a popular holiday destination. Apparently over 1 million tourists visit the island every year!

This beautiful island is world-famous because of its birds! E.g. Spoonbills, Black-tailed Godwits and Avocets all breed here. I had been very busy the whole spring back in Finland, so I didn´t prepare this mission too well. Therefore my first afternoon and evening on the island was mainly spent driving around and getting to know some of the places. I also needed to find a place to stay. I received some useful information about the best birdsites from the B&B owner.

The first evening I spent a few hours with the Avocets, trying to get some backlit photos of them in flight. Avocets were chasing all the flying gulls over their breeding site, so there were plenty of opportunities to get them in flight. However,  it was not easy because the shadowy part of the background was quite small and the birds stayed against the dark background only for a few seconds!
Here you can see what kind of images I was after. I like when the low evening light is coming through the wings of the bird.

Jari Peltomäki

Please note that blogs reflect our photographers' opinions and not necessarily those of the directors of Wild Wonders of Europe.