Birds seen in Europe (Part 3)

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

The most seen bird in Bangalore during our childhood was easily the sparrow.  They’d be all over the backyard, bathing in the open tank, picking at the sun-dried grain and nesting right in our house in-between the roof tiles. It seems that sparrows have vanished from our homes in Bangalore, so whenever I see them in other places, I always stop to watch (though I still have the pleasure of seeing them in Mumbai where I now live).

House Sparrow

The sparrows we saw in Denmark and Norway were much fluffier than the ones we have in India, overweight by our sparrow standards, and better equipped to tackle the low temperatures they encounter.

House Sparrow female, Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen, Denmark

Birds spotted in Europe (Part 1)

Where there is food and water, there will be animal life. This is particularly true for birds for whom there are no boundaries… the sky is their limit!

On our recent 15-day trip to Europe, specifically The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, we spotted many birds, a few that we see in our backyards and neighbourhoods in India, but many that I hadn’t seen before. Whenever possible, I tried to capture them on my camera.

Our first stop was the tulip gardens of Keukenhof, The Netherlands. With the millions of flowers, I guess our attention was on them and not on the birds that were possibly around. At one point many were looking way up high to check out a distinctive knocking sound. It was a woodpecker hammering away, scarcely visible among the trees. Before I could focus, it had flown away. We didn’t see a woodpecker again on our trip.