IN PROGRESS
Last updated 07 July PM
On a glorious, warm morning in July nearly three years ago, shortly after 05.00, I was walking towards the hospital Vivantes am Urban for a bilateral mastectomy (after having been diagnosed with breast cancer when a total of three malignant tumours had been found the month before), when a fox suddenly appeared right in front of me – in Lindenstraße, close to the Jewish Museum. (I had probably been too busy practising long, deep, anti-panic breathing to see him coming).
We both froze and stared into each other’s eyes for what seemed like minutes, but was more likely seconds.
I remember thinking that had I believed in omens, I would be wondering whether this was a bad or a good one. (As it turned out, I could not have wished for a better outcome of an inevitable surgery).
I often thought about the moment in the time afterwards (perhaps I am not as UN-supersticious as I like to think I am :-)). I also decided that if I got back into photography mode, I would seek more such encounters and try to document Berlin’s inner-city wildlife.
Since then, I have been photographing wildlife, mostly birds, in more natural settings and in cemeteries, but not in the streets or other definite city seetings, until one early morning recently, when I startled, and was startled by, two kestrels in E.T.A. Hoffmann Promenade, a small alley leading from Lindenstraße, opposite Jewish Museum, to Friedrichstraße just north of Mehringplatz.
June 2025
I was out looking for photographs for something entirely different for a photography course assignment, so my camera was locked and loaded, (though not specificcally for bird photography), and I managed this bad photo of one of them:
The boat tour with Derk Ehlert, on 15 June, under the premises of “Langer Tag der Stadtnatur”, starting at Märkisches Ufer, was a good opportunity to try to photograph wildlife in a definite city setting.
(My opinion on people’s rude and disrespectful behaviour during such events can be found at the end of this post).
July 2025:
On 27 July I went out walking around sunrise and came home to find that I had probably missed a great photo op. This was most likely the remains of a Goshawk’s breakfast, almost on my doorstep:
Photos from June 2025 and earlier
Summer mornings
Early-morning walks sometimes within a small radius of my home in 10969 (an area I chose not for its instagrammability but for the fact that it is within walking distance of many cultural institutions and also has good public transport), and sometimes a little bit further afield while still in a city setting.
Most often creatures that do not really qualify as wildlife, occasionally a human being, other times just whatever catches my eye in the mid-summer morning light, and indulging my obsession with shadows.
17 June:
And finally, for today, I hope this hooded crow scratches as many of Berlin’s much-worshipped cars as possible:
A rare visitor to my balcony on 24 June
Despite my efforts to create an insect-friendly balcony, sadly the number of insects that visit my sixth-floor perch are fewer and fewer every year. Whether that has anything to do with the fact that flocks of swifts circling not far above are more and more numerous, and later the bats just around sunset, has anything to do with it, in addition to biodiversity loss, I don’t know, but anyway, this morning, this little beauty feasted on my marjoram plant for hours.
And later, after the rain, a thirsty fly.
I have never really paid attention to the Kestrels in the spires of my closest church before:
From a walk starting at sunrise, to dodge the heat, on 1 July:
Though unfortunately, everything is terribly dry right now, I am happy to see more and more stupid, non-native, unsustainable lawns, which have absolutely nothing to do with nature, giving way to the real thing (which attracts insects, which in turn attracts birds …….).
