Hungarian countryside, wildlife photographs and stories

Oh,the boar experience I don't envy you about.
Shucks!

I saw a bunch of deer yesterday. Today "only" a fox. But the first one in ages
I just missed him by a split second for a pic

Are you happy over at Photobucket?

There are two other "good" image providers I know of. Ipernity and flickr. Ipernity has the bigger space for free, I think.

Here's some wildlife (minus my feet and the Dachsen ) from a few days back:

nicoleb.org/b2/media/blogs/NicoleB/2009/Me/36505may/365200910%20walk%209th%20may.jpg

And two deer from a week or so ago:

nicoleb.org/b2/media/blogs/NicoleB/2009/Hungary/Nature/04april/deer%201.jpg

nicoleb.org/b2/media/blogs/NicoleB/2009/Hungary/Nature/04april/deer%202.jpg

Btw, what I was wanting to ask you: How on earth did you get out of your boar experience in one piece?
That's something I am NOT looking forward to....!

Here's some I've taken in the last couple of days.
With the boars...I just stayed still until the piglets ran away. I had a large knife in one hand and was too busy concentrating on what the mother boar might do to get my camera out.
Got photos of fox cub and a red deer but they're really crappy so not worth posting.

A couple more from inside Sirok castle ruins

That's one beautiful region up there.
Love the shots, but especially the first one, wow!

I can imagine that you didn't think about pics in that moment *shudder*
I'm glad all went well!

Saturday's walk:

nicoleb.org/b2/media/blogs/NicoleB/2009/Hungary/Nature/05may/wildlife%20walk%20may%2015th.jpg

Does anyone know what kind of animal could have left that pawprint?

Nice pics. You manage to get some nice wildlife shots.
As for the paw print...gulp!!!!
How big was it?

Thanks
I am still waiting for the day I leave my dogs at home in the morning, go to a hunting high seat and shoot pics of the up to 200 deer that gather at some spots.....
But going out there without my dogs.....mpf.......

We figured on my blog that the print might be a raccoon.

I am currently searching if it might have been a badger,.... <- nope, prints checked, not a badger.

All things point to a raccoon.

Now, when can I make an appointment for a Photoshoot?

I didn't know Hungary had racoons. I've got a skinned one on my wall but bought it from USA, really soft fur.

I don't know if they have. All I could find in my German nature book was that they set some out in the wild in "Hessen" in Germany. So by now there might be some down here

I take it it was just a small print then. I know they've definitely got ferrets and beech martens so maybe it could be one of those.

Well, as big as the pawprint of our Lab, maybe a tad bigger.
I'll keep my eyes open and a measurement tape with me for next time

A froggy I met on Monday:

Yesterday's walk:

Beautiful pictures! WOW

Thanks, Julien - just lucky

Yes, you're lucky. You certainly manage to capture some great wildlife up close. I've not been out lately due to moving house and am now going to have to return to England in a few days for a short while.
I was taken out hunting recently and saw a couple of foxes and 2 roe deer but no photos....and we didn't shoot anything either!

Oh, moving sucks
Have a safe trip to England!

And well, with the 200mm you get pretty "close" without disturbing them too much.
Now, if I would leave the dogs at home....

Moving...hhmmm, we have 2 houses, one for winter, one for summer. We were in the process of moving into our summer house when Erika badly broke her arm so I had to move all our things back to the winter house then 2 weeks later move it all back again to our summer house. Now her Mother's been rushed into hospital in England so we've got to go back there. Erika's flying out on Friday and I'm driving back when a part arrives for our car...maybe Friday, Saturday or Monday. Then we have to return to Hungary by June 23rd for Erika's next hospital appointment for another x-ray on her arm. Maybe then I can relax and start to go out walking again.

Oh shucks
Best wishes for Erika's Mom!
Sometimes it really sucks to be away from "home"

On yesterday's walk:

Excellent. I've not seen many swans since moving here.
I'm still here for a few more days as my car parts didn't arrive so I went out this evening and was rewarded with seeing 2 different groups of wild boar. The 1st was a group of 3 which I got to within 15 metres of then a group of 7 adults and 5 piglets. Sorry about the quality of the photograph but that's the best I could manage with my crappy digital camera.

Boars and swans and deer, oh my!

(Wizard of Oz :-)

Nice photos!
Ray

Thankyou.
Fortunately there are no lions and tigers but unofficially there is the odd bear. The last one I heard of near here was supposedly shot in the Bukk mountains earlier this year by a forest ranger!! ( It was a European brown bear.

We have the Louisiana black bear here in the wild-- but nowhere close to the cities-- far as I know :-)
There are just 400 or so left.

Louisiana black bear photo:

http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/IMAGES/L … an_380.jpg

Speaking of which, where did the gypsies get their dancing bears from?
Ever seen any there?   (Guess that's a silly question and they're long gone.)
In a similar vein, do gypsies (the Roma) still travel in caravans, like in the movies?
That would be in the countryside.
I suppose this is a phenomenon that is long gone.  But, hey-- another friend in Budapest told
me that if you leave your apartment vacant for a while, you might have a problem. He said,"If you don't squatters can move in and claim it as their own. Then the legal hassles really begin."
Wow!   That's incredible.  I guess you really have to keep an eye out on your property and visit it often to make sure this doesn't happen.

Fortunately I've never seen a dancing bear. I hope it doesn't still go on in Europe. I'm sorry to hear about the reduced number of Louisianna Black Bears. I'm quite open minded when it comes to hunting and fishing but prefer the "kill it, cook it, eat it" attitude rather than hunting purely for sport and certainly don't like the idea of reducing the numbers of already endangered species. I've only this week found out that hunting wild boar in this area of Hungary is purely for sport and the hunters aren't allowed to keep their kill, only the tusks!! They keep the carcasses for  a couple of weeks in a frideg and then they're destroyed.
I've got 2 houses out here, both in the country. One is a small "weekend house" but with all amenities high on a hill overlooking Eger where we live in summer and the other is slap bang in the middle of the traditional Hungarian village of Sirok. In Sirok there are plenty of gypsies. I have my own opinions which obviously I'm not going to go into on a public forum. Just as anywhere you go in the world you meet some good people and some bad. I have met many genuinely nice gypsies here and been invited to their houses and I've had some run ins with some real lowlifes. But, we never hear of break-ins or empty houses being taken over by squatters. We do however, hear of many break ins up on the hill above Eger where many houses are only used occasionally.
Here in rural Hungary I still see people without running water using the well in their garden and having to use an outside toilet which moves further down the garden each year. I've also recently seen a guy ploughing his field with a hand plough behind his horse, people collecting hay in the fields by hand and loading it onto a horse drawn cart with pitch forks and a very elderly couple pulling a hand cart along the road piled with hay. It seems to go from one extreme to the other. Rural Hungary is still so far behind in many ways and places....but that's one of the things that really attracted me here. I hopeit never catches up to the England I left behind.

Yes, I saw the photos of the house that you rent out.  Lovely, charming, stunning in its simplicity and folkloric look.   Really a special place.  The British really do know how to renovate  and make a place charming :-)

I can see how the village life of old might be really appealing, and doing things the old-fashioned way.  Harkening back to older, more simple times.

As Nicole said, they take time out to sit and have a beer with you.

It's nice just to sit and be who you are, isn't it?   No pretensions.

We stay at a friend's place in Denmark with a group of cottages surrounding one toilet and shower.  We like it in summer.  No problem for us to hike down the road a bit to the shower and the toilet.   There's no hot water in the cottage, but there's a sink and a butane stove, so we can make coffee, etc.   And if we run out of anything, you just drive over to the nearby SuperBrugsen (super market- like Sainsburys.)  Have had many nice outdoor lunches at the cottage there.  Still, it's not in the remote countryside, like where you live.
:-)

Re gypsies, I was attacked in Moscow in broad daylight by a group of 11 - 12 year olds whom I thought were merely out on a school outing, but they all jumped on me and then let their bodies go limp, which was supposed to bring me to the ground, then they would get my wallet.  Except that I didn't go down and I screamed bloody murder, and it scared them and they ran off.  I was lucky.   Having said that, of course I know that each person is an individual, and you accept them (or not) accordingly :-)

Re animals, let's not even get into the craziness of our leaders here in the U.S., like Dick Cheney (shooting birds just as they are released in the air by hand) and Sarah Palin (shooting wolves from an airplane).   What role models, eh?

Jee - that's as close as I want o get to wild boars, shucks.
I think I heard some this morning, the dogs were pointing like crazy, BEFORE I heard them. Thank goodness there was a small, but deeply muddy stream between us and lots of trees.
But I think I got a gorgeous grey Heron and my first (I guess blurry) cuckoo
Have to check later, just downloaded them and had to eat BF and check mails, before I get started on pics again
Then I need to touch up some fishing shots, make a CD and head back to the lake for some (hopefully free) Lunch
Work has to pay off somehow

I think I heard of a bear sometime this year too, but not that they shot him

There supposedly are some Lynx here in Hungary too, but haven't seen any.

Got the location (more or less) for some black storks today. Will head out for them tomorrow, I think

I guess the Gypsies got theirs maybe from Romania? Or maybe during those times they still had some here in Hungary?
I haven't seen any Gyspie caravans anywhere.
In Germany they drive around in big cars (old Mercedes and such) and go from Hotel to Hotel (I worked in one for 13 years, learned to know a few tribes )

I have never heard of the property thing. I'll try to ask some friends of mine when I remember today.
That would be very insane!

I am with PD on the hunting thing. I took a pic of a hunted deer they have up for show in a "castle" nearby. Them stupid German or Austrian hunters paid 20.000 Euro to hunt that beautiful animal and then they left it here in Hungary because it would have cost another insane amount of money to get it "imported". Morons.

Am with PD again on the good and bad in any kind of people. So far, the Roma I've met have been decent, friendly and nice and utterly helpful.

And yep, here you see more and more horse carts and old Trabants popping up on the street again the higher the prices get and the less money people have.
Every year you see people out at this time of the season cutting certain tree branches and sell them to companies that use them for pharma products.
We have a lot of people live in one or two room houses, the newest invention in some places is a fridge.

Most places in the real rural areas still heat with wood only.

Oh and beer drinking is welcome at any time of the day.
A Palinka before work and a beer. Perfect start for the day

Shucks about Moscow But I heard that Budapest is getting pretty rough too these days.

Ugh, I didn't know about the Palin hunting tours
Yeah, role models indeed

Now, need to get back into the picture flow, shucks....times flying again

I'm trying to avoid the palinka BEFORE breakfast although I know the locals bars open at 7am and there's always several people in at that time.I prefer to wait until at least 9am lol.
I'm sick of de-stoning cherries from our garden to put in our rumtopf. I've already got the wild strawberries in. I'm sure it will be worth it at Christmas though )

7? That's late
I don't do Palinka before or after breakfast any more, unless we go fishing in winter. I might be persuaded to have a good homemade smooth one then

Oh, that's sounds yummy! I made some strawberry jam a while ago (well, it's actually strawberry sauce since I tried to make it without the sugar....but I still like it and I'm the only one eating it anyway)
Sour cherries are next. From neighbours yard, they don't eat them.
I don't have a Rumtopf, sigh - that sounds good !

icoleb.org/b2/media/blogs/NicoleB/2009/Hungary/Nature/06june/Rinya%20small%20lake%20lilien%20edit-2.jpg

Yellow pond Lilies


Poppies


Cuckoo - 2 more shots and some Info on nicoleb.org/b2/index.php/cuckoo-kuckuck-cuculus-canorus-1: my blog

Corn flower / Kornblume / Centaurea cyanus



Green Spurge or Leafy Spurge / Scharfe Wolfsmilch / Euphorbia esula

I've been back in England for the last few weeks so not had any photos to post but as this thread's gone quiet since I left Hungary I thought I'd dig out a photo that I took a few months ago of Egercsehi railway yard. To me it looks what I imagine to be typical Eastern Bloc architecture.

Oh wow, what a cool place !
Would love to Photoshoot there.

I've visited an old cottage, or whatever you call it in English the other day.
Here's the first shot I worked on. More to come and glad you are back!) 

Long eared owl in my backyard this morning

Excellent. Erika would be terrified if she saw that in our garden. She would be afraid for her cats.

Nah, cats are a bit too big
Even the Buzzards out in the fields don't care for them - or our tiny Dachshound

I had a lucky day on my 6km walk.

We saw a whole bunch of birds, most I got identified, some pics are not great, but at least I got them
Remind me to tell the birds to come closer next time

Little Grebe / Zwergtaucher (Tachybaptus ruficollis) (a first)

nicoleb.org/gallery/zp-core/i.php?a=wildlife-in-hungary%2Fbirdwatch&i=bird3.jpg&s=700

Great Cormorant / Kormoran (Phalacrocorax carbo) (my first ones for Hungary)

nicoleb.org/gallery/index.php?album=wildlife-in-hungary%2Fbirdwatch&image=birds3.jpg
nicoleb.org/gallery/zp-core/i.php?a=wildlife-in-hungary%2Fbirdwatch&i=birds3.jpg&s=700

Red backed Shrike / Neuntoeter (Lanius collurio)
nicoleb.org/gallery/zp-core/i.php?a=wildlife-in-hungary%2Fbirdwatch&i=bird1.jpg&s=700

Black stork / Schwarzstorch (Ciconia nigra) (first time I got him on the ground and that "close")

nicoleb.org/gallery/zp-core/i.php?a=wildlife-in-hungary%2Fbirdwatch&i=blackstork2.jpg&s=700

Great spotted woodpecker / Buntspecht (Dendrocopus major)

nicoleb.org/gallery/zp-core/i.php?a=wildlife-in-hungary%2Fbirdwatch&i=birdwoodpecker.jpg&s=700

And some unidentified ones (any help welcome)

nicoleb.org/gallery/zp-core/i.php?a=wildlife-in-hungary%2Fbirdwatch&i=bird4.jpg&s=700

same bird as above
nicoleb.org/gallery/zp-core/i.php?a=wildlife-in-hungary%2Fbirdwatch&i=bird5.jpg&s=700

And the last one

nicoleb.org/gallery/zp-core/i.php?a=wildlife-in-hungary%2Fbirdwatch&i=bird7.jpg&s=700