14 000 Cranes at the Lake Hornborga in Sweden

Cranes at lake Hornborga, Sweden

The small lake Hornborga, situated in southern Sweden, 150 km north east of the town Gothenborg, is the target of cranes coming to Sweden each spring. Visitors to Sweden, in the beginning of April, should not miss this top event of the nature.

Stay over night in the small motel named Ålleberg, after the mountain near by, because the restaurant serves the best of meat balls, with potatoes and lingon-berry.

The visit to the cranes must start before 6 AM and the raise of the sun. More than 14 000 cranes come in from the shore side of the lake, where they rest in the night. They will land on the south side of the like, where food is supplied.

The dancing of the cranes is so wonderful to lock at that you will stay until 8 PM, when the cranes move back out to the shore sides for the night sleep out of the reach of predators.

Cranes landing at the lake early in the morning

Now its time for you to move back to the motel and have a beer, food and a good night sleep.

The statistics of the cranes at lake Hornborga can be followed at the site: http://www.hornborga.com/eng/index.asp

The modern digital cameras are fantastic tools for taking photos of this early morning event. The photo above is recorded with a Canon Eos 20D and the 100-400 L IS zoom lens. I used the 1.4X extender so the effective focal length became almost 900 mm. With the ISO 800 the exposure was f/8 at 1/30 sec. The good old analog film camera would never catch a photo like that.

You can have a look at a small selection of my 800 images recorded during one day at Hornborga at my site called under focus.