IN PROGRESS: Weeks 14 to 17 – 30 March to 26 April

1 April 2026

Watch out, Moon. Humans are coming for you. We have all but destroyed one planet and are looking for another one to wreck. Because it is – alledgedly – Man’s god-given right to trample around everywhere, from the bottom of the oceans to birds’ breeding places to mountain tops and other planets, draining, depleting, exploiting and littering, to serve only our own selfish interests and obsessions.

What started out as a very misty morning and ended as very sunny, I went for a walk along the Landwehrkanal to Admiralbrücke and on to the church of Sankt Thomas on Mariannenplatz (via Bonanza Coffee in Adalbert Straße – great coffee, great looking pastry, unfortunately nothing savoury to eat.

Sankt Thomas is one of the biggest churches in Berlin, and hosts a small exhibition about its, and the areas’s tumultuous history as well as regular organ concerts. On this occasion the organist played works by Buxtehude and Mendelssohn.

Moonrise 1 April and moonset 2 April

On 2 April, I went for a walk in the part of Tiergarten adjoining the zoo, starting at Schleusenkrug. I got carried away and took way too many photos :-).

I seem to be continuing my obsession from last month with the Blue Tit/Blaumeise this season – I have never noticed how cute they are before.

There is a large colony of Cormorants living (wild – no confinement in any way, shape or form) in the zoo, and this time of year they are constantly back and forth gathering food and nesting material.

Of course there are many Great Tits/Kohlmeise eveywhere:

Many Gray Herons/Graureiher in a large colony in the zoo (wild, not in captivity in any way) also flying in and out with food and nesting materials. Plus the one I saw which seems to live in Tiergarten:

And this strange (hybrid?) creature:

Despite myself, I took many photos of the Mandarin Ducks, although I have very mixed feelings about them. They look unreal, they are invasive, and often aggressive towards the native ducks, but still fascinate.

Several Nuthatches/Kleiber were there:

Mrs Blackbird/Amsel hard at work building a home, passively supervised by Mr Blackbird:

And these – Wagtail/Bachstelze, Swan, Starling, Sparrow, Robin/Rotkehlchen, Green Woodpecker/Grünspecht, Buzzard, Gull/Mittelmeermöwe:

Plus two other species, just for a change:

On 4 April I swung by my local cemetery on my way to LPG Mehringdamm and forced myself to mostly photograph something other than birds.

On 5 April, visited this exhibition in Kunstquartier Bethanien of works by nine students from Ostkreuzschule, and found a very nice café on the way there. Just one photo of a Meditarranean Seagull

On my way to “jazz-brunch” in Zollpackhof with a friend, again forced myself to photograph something other than birds. Also, I was deliberately very early, but it was colder and windier than I had expected, so I disovered a (to me) new café – very nice – recommended – and snuck a cappuccino to get warm and while away some of the time.

I don’t know what this building is going to be (still under construction), and I am not sure whether I find it tacky or quite interesting:

It was a good day for shadows:

I am still slightly fascinated by this building, which looks a bit different each time I see it.

After the meal, a quick walk in Europacity, where the gravestone in the last photo made me think of snoopy (sorry, did not mean any disrespect).

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7 April and the media are going on and on about that fly-by “where no human has gone before”. Human greed knows no boundaries. And people wonder why I don’t like people. Present company excepted, of course, but as a species – we are the worst thing that ever happened to this planet. So leave the moon the f… alone! That is all I wanted to say this morning. But looking forward to meeting up – for brunch in Café Nea in the ground floor of the building I live in – with some of the first people I met after moving to Berlin ten years ago. A.B. managed to get out of Gaza with his then two-year-old son. Obviously, that was never easy, and recent years have been especially difficult, having left a large family – parents, siblings, many aunts, uncles and cousins, in Gaza. I can’t find the right words ….

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Happy to see that the nest I can see from my windows towards Berlinische Galerie seems to be inhabited. Unfortunately, there will be too many of those stupid leaves on the tree by the time a view of the nest becomes interesting.

I know – I should not do things like this, but actually, when there are four or more people in the photo and they are in the public space, legally, I do not need their permission to take a photo. However, I really should not publicise the photo, even if it is not for commercial puposes, but I was so drawn to the scene and the textures:

8 April:

9 April:

The transition from winter to summer in one photo (number 4) was just too tempting:

10 April

Birdwatching with Benedikt Jackowski, Freilandlabor Britz – always very informative and interesting. Poor light conditions (and very cold), so only bad photos, of a Sparrowhawk/Sperber, a Black Redstart/Hausrotschwanz and a Blackcap/Mönchsgrasmücke. And a plant with yellow flowers which I don’t think I have seen before – like rays of sunshine on a grey day. And starlings and crows – as common as they are – always make for good silhouettes.

11 April

Birdwatching with VHS – Bernd Steinbrecher – on the most beautifully sunny day albeit still a bit cold. Saw many birds, e.g. four different types of woodpecker, among them my first Lesser Spotted Woodpecker/Kleinspecht – and I am allowing one bad photo of it for that reason. This took place in Erpetal and I definitely want to repeat that walk as soon as possible (but with less than fifteen other people).

The Chiffchaff/Zilpzalp/gransanger – as loud as it is a master of disguise and ALWAYS sees you before you see them:

15 April:

On the sunniest and warmest day so far, I went in search of photos for a photography webinar assignment (not shown here) which took me to the area outside the central station (it seems I have not lost my obsession with shadows) and to Tempelhofer Feld (how cute are the Kestrels there?).

16 April

Looking for more photos for the webinar assignment (not shown here) I swung by Neuen See in. There were a lot of sprinklers going full throttle. I am not a fan. Nature is resilient, rain is forecast, and water is a scarce, valuable resource, so it is mainly short-sighted, wasteful human self-interest (what else is new?) because we prefer our surroundings to look as pretty as possible.

Saturday 18 April

I had registered to attend a birdwatching walk in and around Alt-Lübars. I am quite sure that at some point the announcement in Umeltkalender said that registration was necesssary, but checking now, after the walk, that seems to have been deleted.

In any case, approximately 50 people turned up at the meeting point in Alt-Lübars. That is an absurd number of people for a birdwatching walk. Even if everybody were able and willing to keep their mouths shut, especially while the guide was talking (which is never the case with people’s attention span, or lack of, nowadays, and compulsion to yack all the time, it would have been impossible for most people to hear what was going on. And any birds in the area would probably have kept too much of a distance.

Incredibly poorly organised by NABU Berlin Bezirksgruppe Reinickendorf. Contact person and guide was Helmut Ladenthin.

Luckily, there is a lot of beautiful nature in and around Alt-Lübars, and the weather was perfect, so even though I decided to leave the group before I had even really joined it, the trip was not wasted. I walked in a loop up to the viewing point at Köppschensee and back and had a thoroughly enjoyable walk.

However, I never see a fraction of the birds when walking on my own that I see with an ornithologist at hand. But I did see a Black Redstart/Hausrotschwanz/husrødstjert, for the first time this year (last of the bird photos).

I also tried a bit of landscape photography, though that is not particularly neither my interest nor Spitzenkompetenz.

19 April

Relatively short birdwatching walk with VHS/Peter Badke in the cemeteries in Bergmannstraße. Light conditions not optimal but we saw, and especially heard, quite a few birds. The photos are of “the usual suspects” plus the first Greenfinch of the year.