My birthday present

My birthday is here again… oh, time flies!!! I’ve been thinking about what I should post for this week and it wasn’t easy to choose a theme or a series of photos. The fact that we haven’t been hiking that much lately doesn’t help either… But I was having a look at my previous post and I decided to continue the theme I chose last year at this time: wildlife!!

Since I started to search for a new telephoto lens for my “big” camera, I had the opportunity to try a few big lenses borrowed from colleagues of my husband. I tried a few before deciding: a Canon EF 70/200mm f/4 (which I tried during my trip to Strasbourg), an incredible Canon ED 70/200mm f/2.8 (that I tried during last Christmas in Zurich), and the winner: a superb Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6. When I tried the latter, I had very clear what I wanted to photograph with it. It was winter, the snow had recently covered Zurich and I couldn’t imagine a better subject to photograph than foxes! Just picture it: a fluffy red fox in its thick winter coat in a white scene…

It was more than half a year since I visited the fox family whose photos I published in my last birthday. So the weekend I had the 100-400mm lens I went to visit them again at Wildnispark Zürich. I knew that the little ones had already been released, but I hoped to see the adults in the snow… Well, I didn’t see them, but I could still try the fabulous telephoto lens with some of my other favorite animals as I had never seen them before: beautiful fallow deer in the snow!

It’s been a few months since that day. Now I’m the proud owner of my own Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6. It has been my early birthday present this year! It’s huge and super heavy, specially with a camera that already weights almost 1kg… but I’m in love with it! It’s a great substitute for my smaller 55-250mm that I used with my first camera. I’ve been using the new one mostly in landscape photography for close ups (I specially like to take close ups of mountain peaks with fog or clouds around them!) and the results are great!

But as I haven’t been able to photograph more wildlife (and I still wanted to see the fox family) since I got the new lens, I’ve been visiting Wildnispark more often than last year. I’ve been collecting photos from the animals that live in the park for a few months and through the different seasons. Red and fallow dear, wildcats, foxes and their kittens, brown bear… I’ve even seen my first red squirrel there!!!! A little dream of mine since I was living in Ireland and started with photography!

So, here are a few photos of wildlife that I’ve been taking during the last months with my birthday present. I think I could start a new tradition, publishing wildlife photos on the blog (specially fox photos!) for my birthday 😛 In any case, I hope you like them!!