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.


Click to enlarge

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

Here you can find an overview of all the walks, organised per country and listing all relevant information like km's and whether a GPS-track is available for download.
When you click on the link of a track, you will be taken to the entry of that track with the ability to download the GPS-track.

Country: Netherlands	Town / City	KM's	GPS-track
Limburg	Heijenrath	12 km's	No
Limburg	Lemiers	8 km's	No
Limburg	Rimburg	15 km's	No
Limburg	Meinweg National Park	10 km's	Yes
Limburg	Oud-Valkenburg (Gerendal)	20 km's	Yes
Limburg	Ubachsberg	12 km's	Yes
Limburg	Vijlen	9.5 km's	Yes
Limburg	Wahlwiller circular walk	16.9 km's	Yes
Limburg	Wahlwiller circular walk	8 km's	Yes
Country: Austria
Tyrol	Oetz	10.5 km's	Yes
Tyrol	Umhausen (Stuibenfall)	12 km's	Yes
Tyrol	Gries	17 km's	Yes
Tyrol	Oetz, Knappenweg	14 km's	Yes
Country: Belgium
Flanders (Voerstreek)	Flint walk Sint Pietersvoeren	9 km's	Yes
Flanders (Voerstreek)	To Aubel and back	22.5 km's	Yes
Flanders (Voerstreek)	To Teuven and back	21 km's	Yes
Country: France
Picardie	Any-Martin-Rieux	22 km's	Yes
Picardie	Signy-Le-Petit	8.5 km's	Yes
Picardie	Logny les Aubenton	8.8 km's	Yes
Rhone-Alpes	Le Charmant Som	13 km's	Yes
Rhone-Alpes	Le Petit Som	9 km's	Yes
Country: Germany
Bayern	Rothenburg Tauber		No
Eifel	Maria Laach	15 km's	No
Country: Italy
Sud-Tirol	St. Zyprian	19 km's	Yes
Sud-Tirol	Tiers (Tschafon Hut)	14.5 km's	Yes
Sud-Tirol	Ums	18 km's	Yes
Sud-Tirol	Tiers (Tierser Alpl Hut)	20 km's	Yes
Country: Scotland
Ardnamurchan	Portuairk - Sanna Bay	7 km's	Yes
Ardnamurchan	Camus Nan Geall	7 km's	Yes
Ardnamurchan	Ben Hiant (528m)	6 km's	Yes
Highlands	Strathconon	9 km's	Yes
Highlands	Culbin Forest	11 km's	Yes