In January 2023, I spent a night and a day in Friskens örn och fotogömsle (Frisken’s Eagle and Photo Hide) near Kristianstad in Southern Sweden. The hide was only an hour’s drive from Ystad Harbour, so it was an easy trip from both Bornholm and Copenhagen.
You are not allowed outside the hide during daylight hours, so you must arrive at the hide before sunset and leave only once the sun sets entirely and everything becomes dark outside the hide. This way, you don’t scare off the birds in the area, and they won’t associate the hide with human activity.
Along with @mariusfolkmann I arrived Friday night and was shown the hide and its facilities. It has a primitive camping toilet, a solar-powered phone charger and a gas heater so you won’t freeze the whole time. However, it is cold in January, and the heater can’t run the entire time, so bring warm clothes.
We slept in the hide and woke up early at around 6 AM to remove the outside hatches and ready the camera equipment. I brought my new Sony A1 with a 200-600 mm lens. My maiden shoot with this new camera.
Around 9 AM, the first white-tailed eagle landed, and it just kept getting more and more enjoyable during the rest of the day. We saw 4-5 white-tailed eagles, 30-40 red kites, one kingfisher and possibly a rare black kite. Sadly we didn’t see any golden eagles, but then there is an excellent excuse to revisit the hide.
is a large bird of prey native to Europe and Asia. It has distinctive white tail feathers, a brown body, and a wingspan of over 2 meters. The species is an apex predator, feeding on fish and small mammals, and is considered a symbol of power and freedom in many cultures.
Friskens örn och fotogömsle is highly recommended and I look forward to another trip in the future.
Follow the hide and its visitors on Facebook here or read more on their website here.
I absolute love the Sony A1 with the 200-600 mm lens. I captured shots I couldn’t with other systems I tried and the 50MP allowed me to crop the image quite a bit. Here are some of my favoirote photos from the day. I used the Sony A1 with the Sony 200-600 lens on a fluid tripod head.