I’m waiting for these two blossoms to open together – I hope the timing will work! :-)

There so many of them circling overhead… it was mesmerizing.

I had nothing but trouble taking this one – after several failed attempts I finally managed to get a row of photos that properly stitches together and I better post it now before I find any new problems with it. I think it has something to do with the fact that the stitching software has trouble putting the network of tree branches together. As you can see, the trees haven’t heard the news yet that it’s spring!

Of course there are daisies everywhere at the moment.

With the birdspotting already starting up again, I thought it would be good to collect all of last year’s bird photos into a separate gallery, since I had not categorized them properly when I initially posted them on the blog. There are the usual suspects, but also some we’ve never seen before. Because the photos have been separated from their blog postings, I’ve added descriptions with the bird species in both English and German.

Continue to Gallery »

I found this inscription on a house not far from where we live – I know that there are a lot of old buildings around here, but this is the first one I found that actually advertises it!

We spent the majority of this Sunday out on the balcony, and if we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have seen this spectacle: there were two giant swarms of cranes circling right overhead for minutes. They seemed to be riding the thermals for some time before they organized themselves in a v-shape and flew off to the northeast. We’ve seen many bird swarms before, but this was the most magnificent one yet. I took many photos and it’s really difficult to choose the best – this is only a wide-angle overwiew.

Since I didn’t get any really good shots today, here’s another one from yesterday with the upright blossom.

Another one of the blossoms from the backyard bush.

Another statue at a house in our vicinity, but not in our block – this is at the corner of Muhrenkamp and Kaiserstrasse. Again, I have absolutely no idea who this statue is supposed to represent, although it looks a lot less frightening than the monsters I’ve showed in the previous two photos! The strange object on the house wall is an anchor for the overhead wires of the tramway.