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Bekki Gorgon Photography

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österreich
Wien
Bekki Gorgon Photography

Nature and botanical photography

19/09/2025

Vienna architecture is so beautiful it deserves a feed post ❤️🇦🇹

18/09/2025

Did you know that tigers can't purr?

However, the do produce an equivalent friendly vocalisation called "chuffing" (or "prusten" if you're feeling fancy)

Either way, I'm chuffed with these photos of a Siberian tiger at Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna 😁🐅

17/09/2025

More images from Schönbrunn Zoo - a place with a long and eventful history!

Originally created as a menagerie for Franz Stephan I in 1752, unusually the site wasn't closed after the emperor's death, but instead became a zoo - open to the public since 1778.

The zoo had a very difficult period during WW1 due to meat shortages, but was reimagined in the 1920s with a new approach to animal care, focusing on scientific understanding of animal behaviour and emphasising species protection.

Unfortunately, the zoo's managing director also embraced Na**sm, and took his own life as Soviet forces reached Vienna. Along with significant bomb damage, the zoo was in a poor state by the end of WW2 and faced many years of criticism for its poor infrastructure and facilities, until overdue major innovation in the early 1990s. Since then, scientific research has become a major focus - and it frequently ranks as the best zoos in Europe.

One of the programmes I was especially interested in was work alongside Vienna International Airport, funding and training wildlife detection dogs. These can check a large number of suitcases (like drug detection dogs) detecting illegal animal products and smuggled wildlife. The zoo also identifies and sometimes houses confiscated animals - making sure that their valuable genetic diversity can be maintained in captive "back up" populations.

17/09/2025

One of the newest arrivals to the oldest zoo in the world! 🐘

A male elephant calf at Schönbrunn Zoo - already being hilariously curious and cute at just a few weeks old when I visited last week (he was born on 20th August)

Schönbrunn Zoo are partners with the charity Save the Elephants, working to understand elephant behaviour and reduce human-animal conflict, based in the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya

Previous elephant calves at Schönbrunn Zoo have been part of studies to understand maternal communication in elephants - they make rumbling infrasonic sounds to communicate together (sounds lower than humans can hear) and, along with body language, can have complex social interactions from a young age

26/07/2025

Oystercatcher in front of the May Princess, Isle of May Ferry 🛥️

There were a handful of oystercatchers during my last visit, I'm assuming enjoying the outgoing tide!

Oystercatchers are normally associated with the seaside, and despite their name, specialise in eating bivalve shellfish (cockles and mussels), rarely eating oysters in the UK 🦪

They can prise or hammer shells open with their strong bills - these long orangey-red bills make them easy to identify, along with pinky-red legs

Unlike some of the seabirds I've shared recently, they don't protect their eggs on cliffs or in nests or burrows, instead making a "scrape" (a sort of shallow lined indent) in the bare ground near water, such as a beach of river bank

25/07/2025

Razorbills with a backdrop of stormy seas 🖤🌊

24/07/2025

A very blustery day of birding on the Isle of May! 🌊 Puffins, razorbills, guillemots, kittiwakes, herring gulls and oystercatchers (& grey seals!)

Unusually, this kittiwake has three chicks - it's very rare for them to lay other than two eggs 🥚

They're very cute and a sign of hope when seabirds are struggling in the UK - the chances of a kittiwake chick surviving has fallen from one per nest to one per four nests since the late 1980s, and ten of our seabirds are now on the Red List of conservation concern.

Both puffins and kittiwakes have seen catastrophic declines since 2000 (in my lifetime), with a quarter of puffins lost, and 43% of kittiwakes.

They're at high risk from the effects of climate change, with warming sea temperatures affecting food supplies and extreme weather events damaging nest sites - in combination with avian flu and invasive predators

There's some good news for seabird lovers though - because fishing for sandeels (small high-fat fish which puffins and kittiwakes feed their chicks) has been banned in all Scottish waters since 2024 thanks to RSPB campaigning, and held up through legal challenges this year. This means no more sandeels in our waters will be caught for animal feed (fishmeal), and instead will be available for pufflings and kittiwake chicks 🐟

03/07/2025

Razorbill portraits from the Isle of May 🖤

As well as 52,000 puffins pairs, there are around 2,700 pairs of goth puffins* on the island!

Razorbills are in the Auk family like puffins, but don't lay eggs in nests or burrows. They incubate their eggs on their feet, typically on a cliff face or rocky shore. Like guillemots, who also lay directly onto cliffs, their eggs have a "ovoid-pyramidal" (cone or pear) shape to stop them rolling away.

Razorbills are good swimmers and feed on fish, but will also kleptoparasitise - stealing prey from other seabirds instead of catching their own! 🐟

*yes, I'm still trying to make goth puffins a thing 😆

02/07/2025

The Isle of May is home to 52,000 pairs of breeding puffins this time of year!

Young puffins (or pufflings) remain underground in burrows until they reach 70-80% of their adult body weight. Both parents fish from first light to dusk to bring sandeels (their preferred food source) back to their young - this takes about 40 long summer days!

Their beaks are well adapted to grip sandeels, with rows of inward facing spines (called denticles) which allow them to catch more than one fish per trip 🐟

01/07/2025

A fairly choppy crossing from Anstruther to the Isle of May last Friday, but totally worth it!

Lots of puffins in and out of burrows and gorgeous wee kittiwake chicks 🥰

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