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Another Morning With The Bee Eaters

I was back at the same location as last week to try to capture a few more Bee Eater photos. The intention was to get a Male giving a catch to a Female. Whilst I saw this happen on many occasions, unfortunately, there were some branches between the camera and them, so no photos of this. However, I did manage to get a few shots.

This first one of a Female tossing a Bee in the air to catch and swallow. They do this after they have knocked the stinger against something to dislodge it.

European Bee Eater - Abelharuco - Merops apiaster
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A Morning Session With The Bee Eaters (and few others)

Yesterday whilst on a Community Walk as part of the local Village’s Celebration Day I noticed a colony of Bee Eaters all sitting on a dead tree on the river bank at the other side of the village to the Quinta. The weather forecast promised a clear sunrise so I packed the camera, tripod, chair and pop-up hide last night and set my alarm for 6:15am.

The idea was to get to the river bank and erect my pop-up hide before the Bee Eaters awoke. I was awake before the alarm and after a quick Coffee I headed down to the river bank by just after 6:30am. It was already light, but the sun was still below the horizon, the only birds I could hear were the Nightingales. I set up the hide and waited patiently.

First up a small flock of Common Waxbills arrived with 2 of them sitting on the dead tree, unfortunately, I couldn’t quite get a clean background and this would take a fair bit of Photoshop work to remove.

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Common Waxbill - Bico-de-lacre-comum - Estrilda astrild
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Morning Dog Walk

Every morning (unless I’m out photographing) I take Wally for his morning walk, we usually head down to the river to look for anything interesting and then play in an open area. Now that spring is most definitely under way, I’ve decided to take a camera. It’s difficult to juggle the attentions of a mad dog and carry a camera, therefore, I use my crop camera (Nikon D7100) fitted with the Nikon AF-S 80-400 VRII for size and weight. The idea of the photos is not great quality, but just to report back on sightings in the area.

Today was a pleasant surprise all happening within 500 meters of the house! European Bee Eaters, Short Toed Eagles and I could also hear a Golden Oriole (unless it was a Starling which has been mimicking one all winter!)

First up, the European Bee Eaters. The local colony returned yesterday and are now busy flying around catching food, they will be selecting a nesting site soon and I am monitoring their movements closely. Expect many Bee Eater posts this summer.

Male European Bee Eater

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Yay! The Bee Eaters Are Back!

Yesterday I heard my first Nightingale, but today I’ve heard the first Bee Eater of the year. They are late, they always appear on the 1st April in this area, but they are 4 days late, probably due to the weather and of course the wind that we’ve had!

Last year, they even nested on our land, so I’ll bee-keeping (see what I did there!) a keen eye on them and expect many photos.

Here are a few from last year and below a video of them attempting to build nests before deciding this was not a suitable location.

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European Bee Eater - Abelharuco
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Bee Eater Nesting Is Underway (Video)

I was up with the sun this morning at just after 6am (yes is gets light quite late here in Portugal in the summer) and went for a look at how the Bee Eater nests are doing.

When I arrived, I was lucky, there were no Bee Eaters present (above ground anyway), so I hid myself away under a tree (and camo netting) and waited.

Soon enough I was surrounded by Bee Eaters sitting on a nearby electric cable bringing food back to the tunnel nests. They look like they’ve struck gold and found Hornets and they were busy whacking the sting against the cable to break it off.

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European Bee Eater with Hornet - D810, AF-S 500mm f/2.8 @ 500mm, f/6.3, ISO200, 1/1600sec - {Flickr Link}

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