Latest from the Crane Watch: A swimming crane! I had no idea they can do it, but now I’ve seen it myself so I gotta believe it.

Unfortunately the picture is unforgivably soft, the crane was fast approaching the shore so I had no time to set up anything and shot while the car engine was running. At 600mm (960mm), there’s too much vibration. If only I had gotten there a minute earlier… or if I only I didn’t stop behind the trees at first to try to figure out which bird it was, I just saw a big bird in the water through the trees and my first thought was, a goose? I didn’t want to scare it off so I tried to identify it before I drove to the open spot. Mistake, as it turned out. But now I know!

At the nest though, status quo. The bird was incubating, but then stood up suddenly – I’d like to think it wasn’t because of me, because it was lying there for all those 20 minutes I was watching the other crane by the water, hoping against hope that it would swim again.