I had a spare weekend. I was in Slovakia so I decided to go to southern Poland, the land of meadows and clear ponds.

There are a lot of ponds in southern Poland. I had no information about the good birding and photographic areas in southern Poland so I have to find some. I was searching on the web (especially good are webpages www.birdwatching.pl)  and also on the google maps. Country side is quite diffrent from the countryside in Czech republic. In Czech republic there are big fields but in Poland as most of the agriculture is run by family owned bussines fiels are much smaller and there are much birds in countryside than in Czech republic. My first steps in Poland was to the small ponds around the city of  Skozcow. The city is just about 20 kilometers from Czech Polish border. Ponds are quite diffrent than in Czech republic. They have mostly quite clear water which is usually full of birds.

I was photographing in pond which has about 4-5 hectares. It was full of birds. There were great crested, little, black-necked and red-necked grebes. I have found some small chicks of great crested grebe which is  at the end of September quite unusual. The other birds in the pond where I took these pictures were ferruginous ducks. There were in the pond on very large number of about 40 birds which is quite unusual. Ferruginous duck used to be quite common duck some 50 years ago but since this time their numbers were down rapidly. All the ponds in the area had very clean water and there are a lot of birds on them.

I have also visited the dams around the city of Nysa. There are two large reservoirs named Jezioro Otmuchovskie and Jezioro Nysklie. Western part of Jezioro Otmuchovskie was partly drained and there were a lot of birds like waders, herons and ducks. From waders I saw turnstone, little stints, dunlins about 80 curlews and much more. It is neceseray to have a good monocular as it is in quite a long distance. Best view to the resorvoir was from the road near the village of Sarnovice. There are train running just next to the road so the best view was from train road. The second good area was around the village of Bukow. There were some boats which extract sand from the reservoir. On the sand which was left was quite a lot of shallow water with full of birds(especially waders). I saw there more than 100 dunlins, little stint and turnstone. There were also about 20 great white egrets, 20 pochards and some coots.

Pond which I was taking photos in. It was wioth very clear water.

I took photos from this place. This is my waterhide.

Great crested grebe, the young was still very small for the end of September.

Coot

Juvenile little grebe which was most numerous grebe on the pond.

Black-necked grebe. The photo was taken after sundown so the photo isnt very sharp.

I started to take photos early in the morning. Problem was that it was a mist when there was best light in the morning. This female of Ferruginous duck came closer to my waterhide early in the morning.

Little grebe are quite easy to photograph. When I am taking photos from my waterhide they are quite curios and sometimkes they came as close as one meter from me.

There were a lot of teals on the pond too.

As well as garganeys.

Just o document photo of ferrginous ducks on the pond.

Next part of flock of ferruginous dukcs.

Flying flock of dunlins and one little stint on the reservoir close to village of Bukow.

Související odkazy:

Poland - Part.I - Semianowka 

Poland - Part. II - Biebrza