TomKal foto

I start the texts associated with the landscape of Sweden with the Western Capercaillie. This is not a coincidence. I’ve been planning to see and take photos of this beautiful bird in his natural habitat for a long time.Since it is a rare species in Poland, it was necessary to plan a photo workshop abroad. The capercaille is the largest representative of the galliformes family. Males can weigh more than 6 kilograms and their wingspan is about 1.3 metre. Females are much smaller than males. This information did not make me decide to want to observe these birds. As was the case with the great bustard, their mating habits, the colour of their plumage and their surroundings of the beautiful boreal forest were a deciding factor. This workshop was of entirely different type. After we arrived, the organiser greeted us and urged us to go to the forest as soon as possible. That was the first surprise, because we thought that we would enter the shelter one hour or two before sunrise, as usual, and we would be waiting for the capercaillie. But not with this species of bird. You have to be in the shelter two hours before sunrise in order to listen out for the birds, which would be coming up flying in the vicinity of our camp to look for a night’s rest. In the forest where peace and quiet reigns, it’s difficult to miss this sound. Capercaillies are large birds and their taking off or landing in a dense forest is accompanied by noise. So we take our places in the shelters and are surprised again. The shelters are one person tents furnished with a sleeping bag, a matress and a carrimat.  Outside, the ground was partially covered with snow and the temperature in the morning was below zero. We expected something interesting to happened. So what. After covering the distance of more than a thousand kilometres, we had to cover a distance just one metre more and enter the tent. Warm clothes and thick sleeping bag and cap made this night’s rest tolerable, except for the unnaturally cold cheeks and nose during the sleep. However, the listening out for the sounds of the forest waking up compensated for all that discomfort. Not long before sunrise, we could hear an Eurasian pigmy owl clearly and at dawn the beautiful clangor of cranes. There was something new for me, a conspicuous sound of capercaillies tooting. We could hear a few of them in the vicinity, but the sounds they make are not loud, especially from the perspective of the tent, which only had small observation openings. Only when I saw the bird did I set the tripod with the lens, which was hidden and did not project outside the tent. It was still dark, but in the distance I could spot two silhouettes of the capercaillies. I tried to record the sound, as I was waiting for light. Unfortunately, the capercaillies were receding calmly and majestically. I took several photos, but there were not of good quality. The capercaillies do not have a fixed place of tooting, unlike the black grouse. That is why it is much more difficult to observe them and even more difficult to take photos of them in a way that would do justice to their beauty and the majesty of the male tooting. However, I took a few photos. Unfortunately, the female appeared just for a while and she was high in a tree, so I couldn’t photograph her.

I recommend the reader to stop here to read the last minute news 04/2014 – the black grouses,
because it describes the second day of our photo workshop in Sweden.
The second day influenced our moods on the third day, when I we tried to take photos of the capercaillies again.
After reading the recommended text, I encourage you to resume reading this text below.

I hope this happened and that you read the text about the grouses and now you understand why we came back in such good moods to the same tents, which now appeared to be a really comfortable and safe night’s rest.The scenario repeated. We fell asleep after 8 p.m together with the forest, in which everything became silent. Not for long, because at 5 p.m you could hear the forest waking up to life. Capercaillies appeared. This time one of the male came up quite near and the second one appeared for longer in the distance and froze where he stood.These photos are rather documentary, but they are going to become a keepsake of quite peculiar photo workshops, during which, one could say, we were really living with capercaillies and grouses for several days.This i show these photos were created. The short breaks we took at noon made it possible for us to take photos of other species, which are presented in other galleries related to our trip to Sweden.
Last minute news – 06/2018 - Andora
Andorra seems a rather strange destination for Polish people who want to photograph capercaillie. Belarus, Scandinavia, why not, but Andorra? And indeed, we were the first Poles attending Mark's workshop. Unusual destination and extreme shooting. It is known that to photograph the capercaillie one has to sleep in a tent-lookouts - like everywhere. In Andorra the difference makes the fact that these tents are at an altitude of about 2,300 meters, and the last several hundred meters one has to go uphill carrying about 30-kg equipment. Well, you never know whether the capercaillie will come close, or rather long, heavy lenses will be needed. In a word, it's better to be prepared for every situation and bring it all. In addition a warm sleeping bag, clothes, food, drinks. In a tent pitched on the snow we had to stay from about 6 o'clock in the afternoon until about 10 o'clock in the morning. When it comes to the birds, I have to admit that they did not want to cooperate. The birds were tooting, but it was difficult to take good photos through branches and shrubs. It is hardly surprising they behave like that in the area where the golden eagle is quite common and hunts for them. But this is how it happens, if one wants to photograph wildlife it is needed to be lucky. Nevertheless, it was well worth the trip. The nights in the beautiful mountains, a wake-up to the sounds of the capercaillie, the sounds of goldcrests and coal tits, it was an unforgettable experience. In addition, Mark, the organizer of the workshop, proved to be a competent, nice guide and created an atmosphere that made us possible to cope with hard conditions of photographing and reach the summit. Mark, thank you and best regards. I also greet my companions - both of them: Pieter and Pieter! Finally, a few of my previous, documentary photos, after four years were enriched with new, better ones. In spite of their poor quality, I also added some of the documentary photos that show the fights of the capercaillie. After changes the gallery eventually received a good mark, in my relative and subjective assessment. I have recently seen pictures taken by Piotr Nocoń, hundreds..., thousands of wonderful pictures of countless bird species and many others. I have never seen such a wonderful collection of photos at any other individual websites. Piotr created a separate class, outstanding category, as only a very limited group of people in the world can match this achievement. It is difficult to mention the species excelently presented by Piotr, but all the puffins, the golden eagle, the osprey, the white-tailed eagle, the steller's sea eagle, the short-eared owl, loons and many, many other species have been so wonderfully photographed that if Piotr created the galleries with even hundreds of pictures they would not be boring or overloaded at all. Well, but with such abundance of the pictures, to present them at a website, to systematize and make the final choice among hundreds and sometimes thousands of images suitable for publishing, it would be necessary for Piotr to spend on them not hundreds but thousands of hours. I raise this point because I hope to provoke Piotr to work on his own website. I am convinced that it could be a showpiece of nature photography in our country. Piotr, your photos inspire, though they are at a level difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, such attainment needs to be shown to the public and carried on to descendants instead of gathering dust on your computer's disks! That was it about our stay in Andorra, a trip I will surely recall in my memories, because it was not just another  trip,  but the place where the capercaillie are still tooting in the beginning of June...