Category Archives: My photos

Schildkröte

Since the weather was still unusually balmy and sunny for November André and I went for another long walk yesterday, Sunday. We went to the Wagbachniederung, which is a protected area not far from us. It is known for attracting birds, especially migratory birds, as the area is very boggy and has large areas of water and reeds.

Auf der Seite von Norbert Kühnberger kann man nachschauen, welche Vögel in den letzten Wochen (bis Jahren) dort gesichtet wurden.

We took our binoculars and saw a lot of the species that we expected, for example around twenty Great egrets (Silberreiher), which are not usually found in Germany. Of course we also saw the much more common Grey heron (Graureiher) and hundreds of cormorants (Kormorane).

I was most surprised though when we saw this animal:

See it right in the middle of my horrible cellphone photo? It’s a turtle!

Unfortunately it was too far away to make out any details, so identification is difficult. It might be a European pond turtle (europäische Sumpfschildkröte), but it’s quite large in that case. Another possibility is that it is a Blanding’s turtle (Amerikanische Sumpfschildkröte) that has escaped from captivity. I guess we’ll have to take a proper camera with a good tele lens the next time we go there…

Fall Walk

Yesterday André and I went for a nice long walk around our village to enjoy the balmy 20°C (68°F) weather and stopped by two small lakes nearby. Besides the usual mallards (Stockenten) and coots (Blässhühner) we saw two Egyptian geese (Nilgänse) on the first lake, but they were too far away to photograph. I’ve seen them there before, though. The Egyptian goose is an invasive species that has established self-sustaining populations all over Germany.

This is the second lake:

On this one, there were four grown white swans and one adolescent one which looked quite young for the season and was following another swan, presumably its mother.

Rodalber Felsenwanderweg

A few days ago André and I took advantage of the sunny fall weather and spent two days hiking the Rodalber Felsenwanderweg (offizielle Homepage auf Deutsch, Flyer mit Karte), which is a 45km (28mi) loop path around the small town of Rodalben in the Palatinate Forest, about 100km (60mi) from where we live.

Despite being not very far from the town, most of the path is actually a very narrow footpath through the forest, and it passes about 130 sandstone formations that are at least 15m long and 3m tall, but can be as big as 500m long and 18m tall. Many of them reminded me of the sandstone we’ve seen on our trips to the Southwest of the USA, but instead of being in a desert, these are in the middle of a large forested area with many rocks covered by trees, bushes and smaller plants like moss.

We were very lucky with the weather on the first day (Monday 26 October), which was very sunny. On the second day the sun didn’t manage to break through the fog which rose in the morning, so our hike took on a more mysterious air. The following photos were all taken on the first day.

The Bruderfelsen (brother’s rock) is Rodalben’s landmark, with a legend of two brothers who fought over one woman to go with it.

Detail of a sandstone formation:

There were many, many different mushrooms growing from the ground or tree stumps. Here’s a fly agaric (Fliegenpilz):

Fall colors:

A week of optical phenomena in the sky

Tuesday, June 23rd, around 5:30pm: supernumerary rainbow (Regenbogen mit Interferenzbögen):

Thursday, June 25th, around 6:30am: sun dog (Nebensonne). I saw another one just before sunset that day, but didn’t take a photo because I didn’t have my camera with me.

Sunday, June 28th, just before 4:00pm: complete 22°-halo, pale sun dogs on both sides, plus an almost complete parhelic circle (22°-Halo, Nebensonnen, Horizontalbogen. Why didn’t I bring my camera? I captured part of the display with my phone, though…

Here’s the upper part of the 22° halo:

And here’s part of the 22° halo again on the upper right, plus part of the parhelic circle on the left:

(I hid the sun behind a street light.)

Sonnenfinsternis

After missing the previous total solar eclipse that was visible in Germany in 1999 due to excessive cloudage in Bonn I was doubly lucky today: There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky, and my timetable at school allowed me to watch the entire eclipse from start (9:29am) to finish (11:49am).

I had a pinhole camera, eclipse glasses and a sun projector at my disposal. Many students also had brought eclipse glasses and/or pinhole cameras, and the beginning of the eclipse happened just before the end of recess, so everyone was keen on taking a first look.

The sun projector proved to be a huge hit as it provided the largest picture of the sun with a diameter of about 5cm; here’s a (bad) photo I took of the projected image around 11:24am, only half an hour before the end of the eclipse:

While discussing the upcoming eclipse with my tenth grade yesterday we noticed the pattern of circles that the sun was making on the classroom floor. I realized that the holes in the blinds act like pinhole cameras and predicted that the circles would turn into crescents during the eclipse, but I think most of the students did not quite believe me until they saw it today – there were rows upon rows of tiny eclipses all over the floor and walls:

One student showed me this photo she had taken and wanted to know why the sun seemed to be whole while the eclipse was visible above and to the right:

It turns out that the sun was still so bright that that its shape was not accurate*, but the lens flare showed the eclipse – how cool is that?

*I know there’s a proper term for this that refers to the fact that when too much energy reaches one pixel it overflows to the neighboring pixels, thus altering the form of the lightsource you’re photographing, but I can’t remember it right now.

Zum Abschluss noch ein paar Links auf deutsch für die geneigten Leser aus der Nachbarschaft:
Sonnenfinsternis am 11. August 1999 und Sonnenfinsternis vom 20.03.2015 (heute), Lens Flare bzw. Linsenreflexion

Besondere Erwähnung verdienen die Sonnentaler – für die gibt es keinen englischen Begriff, so weit ich weiß. Gemeint sind die Lichtflecken, die ein dichtes Blätterdach oder auch kleine Öffnungen in Rollläden/Jalousien verursachen und die heute während der Finsternis als kleine Sonnensicheln zu sehen waren. Die Entstehung beruht auf dem gleichen Prinzip wie die Bildentstehung bei einer Lochkamera.