Friday 2 April 2010

Lake Hornborga

We finished our road trip today at Lake Hornborga, which is famous for providing a resting place for a large flock of cranes every time this year. Both bird watchers and ordinary folk come from near and far to look at these masses of cranes.





The cranes spend the winter in Extremadura in southern Spain and make Lake Hornborga their last stop before they set off for their different breeding grounds all around Sweden. They stay at Lake Hornborga for about 2-3 weeks.





We brought our binoculars and joined the other bird watchers along the fences towards the cranes' resting and feeding places. The kids were fascinated by this huge amount of birds, there were birds for as long as the eye could reach. "Into infinity!!" as Lucas said!





Today's count was 9400 birds.
They are counted at dusk, using binoculars, when they all leave their feeding places and fly into the lake to sleep. You can see some earlier statistics here.
It's really quite impressive, and fascinating!



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