Animals!

Yeah, I like taking pictures of animals, especially birds. Here in Vienna, there's been a veritable invasion and revolution in the avian fauna, in that the usual crows were replaced and intermingled with dun crows. Their offspring are even fertile, so it's hard to tell if one crow is an actual dun crow, or a crossbreed. My lack of experience in that field does not help, either.

True to form, I'll start out with something boring. Since in the Palace park of Schoenbrunn, most animals are wildly overfed by tourists, they hardly even take notice of the presence of humans. This one just kept on scrounging food while I was roughly 1 m (or 1 yard) away. Behold my tolerance for non-metric measurements!



Well, mallards are not exactly exciting, either. Lethargic until some tourist or other throws them some crumbs, or what have you. Or until they get in a girl fight. These three ladies (there were no males, none at all. Perhaps summer resort?) looked at me as if wanting to say "Well now, what do you want, young man?". They did not really seem indignant about my photographing them, however.

Girl fight! Check it out!
I wonder if that'll get me more hits...

So, it's a toss-up between these three pictures as far as my personal favourites go.











There was a gaggle of dun crows, and they usually remind me of businessmen, bustling around, having discussions over pickings…
They also have meetings in high places. I tell you, they are taking over.


That's it for today, I'll do some more rummaging and taking pictures (talismere said she wanted detail pictures of architecture... We'll have to see about that, won't we).

What I forgot to say: All the pictures I took are free to use, as long as you give me credit... Not that I can imagine people wanting to use them. Cheers!

So!

It's been over a month, time to put more boring things in here. I'm currently in Vienna (nicest city in the world, I might add), clearing up some personal stuff. This did not keep me from taking pictures, luckily. So I'll write little here, and let the pictures do the talking.

Basically, it's pictures of Vienna (houses and sights), and specifically picures of the Museum of Military History, where they had two whole days of pre-WW2 demonstration shootings (with gunpowder, obviously...). Gotta love re-enactors. Well, here goes!













This is Schoenbrunn Palace, the Austrian imperial summer residence. It's situated farther away from the city's center.


















This is the Gloriette, and below it, the Neptune fountain, situated in Schoenbrunn Palace's parks.














This is the Hofburg, with the Heldenplatz in front of it, the 'Heroe's Square', in a rough translation.


Okay, enough sightseeing. Here come the guns.





Soo... this is a mortar. I don't know the exact grenade size, but it was something around 25-30 cm (or 10-12") in diameter, which is already pretty damn large. It was pretty loud, too, even at some distance.



























A minstrel group, with dancer. Although definitely not my cup of tea, the music was nice.














This is a so-called 'Haufen', where Pikeneers and Musketeers fight together against both cavalry and infantry. They had a snarling sergeant-major to boot, too!


So, that's it for now, I have more pictures stored, but I'm not in the mood to select any more now ^_^



P.S.: blogger's playing Old Harry with the layout, I'll have to work around that.