We were having an early diner (at around 17.00 hrs) when we suddenly saw all the birds in our garden take off. And at the same time we heard a loud scream which seemed to be the scream of a house sparrow. And then......suddenly there she was, in the middle of our small garden, with a house-sparrow caught in her claws: a Sparrow-Hawk.

She looked around for quite some time untill she finally declared the garden as 'safe' and started to pluck her prey. She was only about 8 - 9 metres away from us, but that didn't seem to bother her. Probably the insect-screen made us a bit invisible to her. We were able to shoot a photo of the Sparrow-hawk, but only through the insect screen. But nevertheless it is quite a nice shot.

In the fields near our house a farmer put up a nesting box for kestrels. This year there were two young birds on the nest. This is an image of one of the youngsters waiting for his parents to bring him some prey. The image by the way was shot with a Canon Powershot A640 handheld at the zoomeyepiece of a Zeiss Diascope (85mm). The bird was sitting at a distance of at least 100 yards.


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Last week we shot a few images of green finches in our garden. This one is enjoying his meal at the bird feeder.

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Well.....where to start?
Do you ever take a look at all the photo's in your digital photo-album on the computer to see what you have photographed the last couple of months? Nope .....of course not, it is just too much, isn't it.
You do want to have some kind of diary to fresh up your memory, but you know you are not a real writer type?

Well, that is exactly what we have been thinking about for quite some time and came to the conclusion that a blog could solve this problem.

Why is your blog called HikingMoose.com?
ah ...... good question.
Did you know it took us ages to decide on a name for our blog! Really, it is not as simple as it looks cause most domain names were already taken.

Now we are lucky people because often on our trips in the nature, we bring along a stuffed animal which accompanies us in our rucksack. And somehow, although we have tons of stuffed animals and he is not even that small, we always seem to grab Elgar the Moose.
So.....we love to hike, like to bring a silly Moose on our hikingtrips, our blog was born !

Who is Elgar the Moose?
Elgar the Moose originates from Norway. He has even got an own website. It tells you that Elgar is a bit clumsy and helpless but always in a good mood and very friendly. He always brings a smile to our faces.
In reality we are two crazy Dutch people, living in the Province of Limburg.

But who and what is then Clan MacMoose?
Clan MacMoose are our co-authors from Scotland. (Now you probably understand the words "Clan" and "Mac", don't you?). They run a lovely Bed & Breakfast, Homefarm (Muir of Ord), and we have met them in the year 2006 during our summer holidays.

Clan MacMoose are real nature-lovers and know the best places to go to in Scotland. They are big fans of HikingMoose.com and wanted to be part of this great adventure. So......we have made them co-authors. Now and then they will post some pictures, mostly focused on the wildlife and landscapes of Scotland.





Enjoy your stay at our blog and if you want, please leave us a comment