Morning of my second full day at the lake was also cloudy. That was an excuse for another fairly late departure for photography. However, we did what we planned to do. We put the floating hide together which Dimitris had built for my mission. Then I got into the wetsuit for the first time in my life and jumped into the cold water of Lake Kerkini. Air temperature was about +10 degrees centigrade and water must have been max +7 degrees centigrade. There was no problem to stay in fairly cold water for 1,5 hours. The pelicans were a little afraid of the structure to start with, but when they got used to it, I managed to swim fairly close to the birds with it! Great different angle to the Pelicans!

Weather was first very grey and when I got into the water it started to rain, which didn´t make me any wetter… Fortunately I had protection for my camera, so it didn´t get too wet and it was working alright. Then we got some sun and for the background there were dark clouds. Actually really good conditions for Pelican photography! Today I made some nice action shots of feeding Pelicans.

When I got up from the lake, the local fishermen invited me and Dimitris to have a little wine and Ouzo with them in their cottage. Naturally we couldn´t resist this attempting invitation. Beside the alcohol there was also boiled fish liver, fried fish, fermented cabbage and bread on offer. So we had a very good lunch! Actually these local fishermen are so friendly and hospitable to us, that I can´t imagine this kind of hospitality in Finland or elsewhere where I´ve been.

The evening continued at the hotel with the processing of some images and trying to make my first blog submission.
Tomorrow morning is supposed to be fairly bright, so we are aiming for sunrise shots of Pelicans.

Tags: dalmatian pelican, lake kerkini, photo competition, photography, wild wonders of europe

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 6:15 pm and is filed under Greece - Dalmatian pelicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.