The morning was grey, so there was no reason to go out too early. When there was light enough, we drove around the lake to a small fishing harbour where there are usually Pelicans to be found. Also this time there were some Pelicans, but to our surprise they were quite shy and didn´t even come to the offered fish. I got some atmospheric images of a group of Pelicans swimming in front of the misty reedbeds. It really seems that Lake Kerkini is THE place for Dalmatian Pelican photography! By midday weather started to improve and the afternoon was sunny with blue sky.

The lake around the town of Kastoria is probably the best place in Greece to photograph Pygmy Cormorants. Today I got some perched birds also with their wings open in good light, swimming birds and I also tried to take some flight shots. We will see later if there are any good ones. Pygmy Cormorant is a fast flying bird and I tried to capture them against the colourful Greek town, so it was a real challenge for the autofocus.

Bonus of the day was a breeding plumaged White Pelican which swam into the small harbour while I was waiting for Pygmy Cormorants to do something photogenic. Apparently White Pelican is a more difficult species to photograph than Dalmatian Pelican in Greece. The very first time I also realised that it is really not a white bird at all, but it should be called Pink Pelican!

Tonight I drove for 3 hours back to Lake Kerkini. Most of the main roads are really good and Greeks drive fast, so a 300 km distance can be driven in 2,5 hours! Still four and a half days left of my mission in Greece. Unfortunately the weather forecast promised rain here for the whole day tomorrow. However, I will go to meet fisherman Tom´s Pelicans tomorrow!

Tags: dalmatian pelican, greece, lake kerkini, wild wonders of europe

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 6:21 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.