What a beautifull sight it was today on the field near Mariahoeve in The Hague. We had the first snow this season and as a small miracle it didn't melt away within 10 minutes. From previous years I knew that there would be a small chance to see some migrating storks there.
An excellent chance to test my latest aquisition (indeed I still suffer from LBA). A few weeks ago was able to buy a lens that was in the posession of Walter van Soestbergen (make sure to visit his site one day!), a used Pentax A* 600/5.6. Finaly for me some true reach when shooting wildlife that scares easily. Especially as the FA* 300/2.8 with a 2x converter didn't give me the quality I was after.

After a short stroll to the North side of the field, there were no storks to be seen and I decided to leave the snowy weather and went back to the car. When driving away, I noticed in the relative shelter of a small bush, a group of 25(!) storks. I was lucky as they were indeed there!
I covered the lens with an old t-shirt (too bad the older lenses are not dust and weather sealed) and took the equipment out for a 10 minute shoot in the snow.

This blue heron didn't seem to notice it's cousins and walked seemingly undisturbed through the group of storks. I noticed though that the seemingky white storks, looked rather brown and dirty while they were standing there in the snow. Were they dirty from travelling great distances or are they not so white looking after all? Perhaps they were still juveniles?.
Anyway, this was a great moment between this years first snowflakes!