Tanca wall, my home

Today I would like to show you the first pictures from Majorca, where we spent the first part of our parental leave for 4 weeks until this morning. We'll take the second part in autumn.

Even though our little Ben was the centre of attention, I spent a good hour early in the morning and in the evening (at sunrise and sunset) photographing nature, which was a lot of fun. This year I reduced the ‘radius of action’ to a maximum of 10 minutes' drive, which actually worked well - Majorca simply has a lot of photogenic flora and fauna to offer at this time of year and the south is very suitable for short distances in my opinion.

So I was actually able to capture 4 very different series, with 20 pictures each:

Tanca wall, my home
Landscape photography in Ses Salines
Mallorca - land of gladioli
Bird life of Ses Salines

At the beginning of March, the fields were not yet covered with all the early bloomers, as they were at the end of March. Gladioli, for example, were still nowhere to be seen. The usual breeding birds were also very limited at the salt lakes.

But our finca was in the middle of the natural surroundings of Ses Salines and right next to marvellous stone walls. 200 metres from our house, I had a lovely encounter with a trusting stonechat in a flowery field.

This gave me the idea of dedicating an entire series this year to these beautiful walls and the typical habitat that characterises the landscape in the south.

1 The ‘tanca walls’ run along most of the roads in the south, even the narrowest and smallest streets are decorated with them

These dry stone walls (Tanca-walls) are around 1.50 metres high and consist of large stones, with the wall becoming narrower towards the top. The stones on the older walls in the south in particular are covered in moss and lichen and are really worth seeing...

2 After a short landscape photo session, I was able to capture this beautiful spot on the way home

Plants have often adapted to the walls - apart from a large number of flowering plants directly in the walls, you can always see trees and shrubs that have adapted well to this habitat and are practically interwoven with the walls, as here:

3 In addition to the great structure, I was again fascinated by the lichens

Let's move on to today's protagonist, the stonechat. The habitats of stonechats are very small and so it is common for individuals to live on a particular wall in Mallorca and of course often use it as a perch, at this time of year for mating and singing.

4 The stones of ‘his wall’ were particularly beautiful - I hope you recognise the little one

There was a wild mix of different plant species, which made for beautiful background colours.

5 In the background you can see a typical windmill, or more precisely a watermill. For these two pictures I used my wide-angle lens with a remote shutter release, of course, because the little fellow didn't come that close to me after all

Next, let's ‘zoom in’ a little and I'll show you a few detailed pictures of ‘my’ stonechat from the neighbourhood. As already mentioned in my last blog article, all the pictures were taken with the lightweight Nikon 600/6.3 PF at 840mm with a teleconverter, as I had to take a lot of the pictures freehand while standing in favour of the background colours and my 600/4 was too heavy for this.

I hope you enjoyed the series 😊 The next part will be published next week...

Many greetings,
Thomas