Every spring, hundreds of cranes gather up in the open fields of Korskrogen, waiting for the winter to release its grip on their nesting grounds. The fields are not really photogenic, so I haven’t even tried to photograph them before. This year I thought I would try, just to have something to remember them by. I parked my car behind the only natural hide along the road, staked my claim on slab of rock and waited for the cranes to come closer to me. But the cranes are wary creatures and never came very close, they seem to want to keep a good buffer zone between them and the road, and my rocky outcrop was right next to the road. Under those circumstances, 300mm is too little so frame filling crane pictures were out of the question. But like I said, I only wanted to document them anyway so I was just happy to watch the cranes peck the ground and delighted to see a little bit of crane dancing!

There was also a lot of birds in the air, two large flocks of pigeons and then some smaller birds that were coming and going, and every once in a while a few cranes would fly overhead. I tried my hand at flight shots and I was surprised to find that I got a few which were almost sharp – but the blur is so slight that you’ll need to see the full size image to catch it.

And could I please rant a little bit as well. While I was lying there on the rock, I was in full view of the road. There was a little bit of traffic, some cars stopped to take a look at the cranes, some cars slowed down a little bit and some cars honked the horn. Question. Did they honk the horn at me or the cranes? In either case – why?!