Search Results for: stork
Arrogant storks
Sorry, there’s no other word to describe it. Stop in any rest area in the Alsace area of France, and you’ll be sure to see plenty of storks strutting around. But, try to walk up to one. They won’t attack you. They won’t run away. Instead, they shrug their shoulders and turn their heads away, […]
Those embarrassing Swiss storks
I‘ve written about storks in Alsace, storks in Germany, storks in Bulgaria – and lots of other places. I‘ve written about stork migration – how they learn their destinations and even their flying technique from their local neighbors. I‘ve even written about stork poop. Until now, just about every stork nest that I have come […]
The incredible, amazing storks of Winterthur
Although most people think of Alsace when they think of storks, in fact southern Germany but also northern Switzerland has some. Here is the Swiss village of Wiesendangen, and on top of the tower you can see a little platform for a stork: No stork there at the moment – just a few weeks ago […]
Getting a narcissistic stork to finally eat a bit of ham
The storks that like to hang out at the Alsatian highway rest areas in Eastern France must surely be narcissists, because they let humans get quite close and watch them, but they always refuse to eat just about anything you might toss out. In fact, they sort of parade around with a certain stork-arrogance, strutting […]
Storks surfing the golden wave
I thought this was one of the most amazing snaps I’ve taken of storks to date, framed in front of a massive hill of yellow blooming canola:
The world famous “Smoke Stack Storks” of Alsace, France
I don’t know if such storks really exist, but here is a stork I caught nesting on a smoke stake just south of Colmar, in the French countryside of Alsace. Here is the fellow at a distance: And here is the fellow up close:
Stork poop
OK, sounds gross, but it’s one of those questions you gotta ask! Alsace and Southern Germany are filled with storks, as this snap of a village in Alsace shows: But it makes you wonder: do storks poop into and onto their nests (as do many birds, such as pigeons), or do they keep their nests […]
Train Storks
Storks. I’ve written about transformer storks, house storks, monument storks, and Bodensee storks. And now to add to my collection of storks, train storks! This fellow set up shop at the Basel Bahnhof, and as you can see from this snap he looks rather proud of himself: Technically, he is geolocated in Switzerland – but […]
A migrating muster of storks
Yesterday I spotted a muster of storks (sometimes, at least according to Wikipedia, called a phalanx of storks) overflying the Zurich airport in Switzerland, at an altitude that made them nearly impossible to see: In fact, I could not see whether they were in fact storks. Fortunately, I had my camera with me, and it […]
Terrifying, intimidating, threatening stork
Ok, maybe it is not so terrifying, intimidating, and threatening, but nevertheless a stork walking around a highway rest area in Eastern France is really something to see. You can try all you want to tempt this fellow with potato chips, but unless you have a bag of fresh frogs or live mice, you’ll hardly […]
Bodensee Stork
I’ve written many blogs about storks, and this is my latest snap, taken at the Franciscan cloister of Hegne just across from the Southern German village of Allensbach:
Silhouetted Sélestat Stork
This is an unretouched snap in color that reminds me a lot of the black and white photos of Ansel Adams, If you get up close and personal with the beast, he looks a bit unkempt:
Stadtmauerente?
Here’s something you don’t see every day. This is the medieval city wall of the city of Konstanz, also known as the Stadtmauer (the wall, not the city): That’s not the amazing bit. The truly amazing bit is way up on top: a female mallard duck that looks like she is roosting there: Even if […]
щъркел – Shturkl!
Everybody knows you can find some storks living in Alsace, France – but these days, just a few. And if you look hard enough, you can find some living in Southern Germany – but these days, even fewer. The first time I left Sofia to explore the West Bulgarian countryside, I was amazed to find huge […]
Hannibal in Salamanca
This is Hannibal: And this is Salamanca, in western Spain: The cathedral somehow looks a bit tilted, so here is a second photo to assure you that it is not tilted. It also shows the Roman Bridge, which (unbelievably!) was built in the first century AD: I believe this is the first city that I’ve […]
Places I’ve worked in IT
I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked on IT topics in many exciting places. Sonoma, California Sonoma State University is an amazing place with a beautiful campus, located north of San Francisco and just at the gateway to the Sonoma and Napa Valleys. Here I got my first real programming challenges, developing applications that were […]