Sunday 23 December 2012

Sipadan: the turtle capital

For those of you caught in the christmas-snowstorm, I´ve wrote a little tale about the diving in Sipadan: a warm, sunny place with white sandy beaches and blue water.

Check out the e-magazine "Habitat" from the Danish Zoological Society and indulge yourself in the living wonders above and below the surface of planet earth:

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To my english speaking friends - sorry - it´s all in danish... but I´ll  post a not so danish update of Sipadan on the blog soon.

Until then - MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of you :-)  

Saturday 15 December 2012

Colourful East London

Last weekend Mette and I spend a few days in London. As I´ve never been to the east before, we took a long walk around this colourful and sparkling part of the city.
 
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There´s so much street art to see here.. Whenever I went 20m down a little empty street to look at some obscure paintings, I found myself going further 10 meters down the road, twisting my neck around the next corner expecting a new hotchpotch of colours to be thrown into my face. 


The largest Indian population outside India itself, is found in London. More than half a million...even the street names are written in Hindi (thats at least what I think it is) in some areas of East London..how cool is that!! 

I wont´ even think of how the right winged "Danish Peoples Party" would react if a roadsign with a foreign language would dare to find its way into a danish street. We are so patriotic (say ignorant) that we haven´t even managed to set up english signs to guide our non-danish speaking tourists through the busiest train station of Denmark!! 

Anyway, maybe we´ll find our future generations more embracing than ours..enough politics, lets move on to something more important: 

   
..SHOPPING!! Sneak in through the small open doors along Brick Lane, follow the trails and soon you´ll find yourself standing in funky underground warehouses with all sorts of clothing and outfit.. The famous Spitelfields market is found just round the corner - this is where high street giant All Saints started out with its own little stall.

   
Walking through East London you´ll find yourself with a constant tingling feeling in your nose. Foodstands with all sorts of spices and tasty, colourful dishes will make your over-stimulated salivary glands go nuts. 

 


To top up the day we ran into this little festival in Shoreditch - a gathering of all sorts of rebuild campervans serving various food in a great atmosphere. Our last few pounds were well spend on a bowl of delicious curry. We missed out their apparently delicious burgers - but as Mette spotted "The Londoner"-blogger, we had the opportunity to get a virtual taste of them:

http://www.thelondoner.me/2012/12/eatmeup-burger-battle.html  

 

Wednesday 12 December 2012

Zoo portraits continued

Well, not all the animals I came across look as sad as the ones in my previous post. Some of look rather silly...


...or hungry
 
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...and even more hungry
 

...or just extremely cute as these red pandas
 
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..but the dalmatian pelican is still gazing out into the cold autumn mist knowing that there is a better world just beyond the fence..

Wednesday 5 December 2012

Zoo blues

A few weeks ago I went to the zoo to see if I could get some nice wildlife portraits (well not exactly "wild" - but still...). Here are a few of them. The rest will come soon...


Maybe its just me, but once in a while it looks as if the animals are gazing, or daydreaming about the endless savannah, fields of icebergs or wast forestlands.

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This dalmatian pelican ("krøltoppet" pelikan in danish) eyeballed me so hard as if it was blaming me for depriving its freedom.


Anybody who has seen this polar bear in the Copenhagen zoo must have noticed how he just wanders back and forth, back and forth, back and foth, back and forth in his little man-made concrete confinement. If you went to see him 10 years ago he was doing exactly the same. Poor fellow, he´s probably gone insane - who would´nt? :-( 

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This little guy below looks a bit sad to...almost as if he wishes that the piece of carrot he is about to take a bite of, is a fresh and juicy nut. Anyway, he didnt look sad to long..he was probably born in here and think this is the greatest place on earth! Free food all day and great free real estate as well!! :-) 




Sunday 4 November 2012

Late Autumn Colors

A little update from our colorful backyard "Jægersborg Dyrehave". Mornings are getting cooler, red tones are turning into yellow while the roaring ecco of rutting Red deers has ceased.

However, sika- and fallow deers are now busy showing of their antlers and impressing females.
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Compared to its more impressive cusin (-red deer - scroll down a bit), male sika look rather chubby and clumsy... 

 


It took me some time get a clean shot of this great-spotted woodpecker. Only equipped with a 200mm lens you realize how much reach you are missing to catch these birds. Anyway, my patience was suddenly rewarded as this little fella came down from the canopy and started "pecking" only 20m from me.



I found a good hidden spot from where I hoped get some shots of male fallow deers fighting. It didn´t take long until a pack of males were gathered and started challenging each other. But my timing couldn´t be worse: the ridiculous sound of a toots horn indicated that the annual hubertus hunting (the hunting part is banned, by the way) had begun, and soon after the woods were filled with neon-colored raincoats (with people inside)...


So these poor deers were running around like crazy trying to get away from the noisy crowds...and my photographic opportunities did not increase as a chopper came about to document it all.



...do I sound like a grumpy old man?! Well, it´s because the point of sneaking around in mud dressed up like a tree kind of disappears when you have 20 people in yellow raincoats running up next to you with their little teeny weeny...OK enough for now :-)