Otter At Our River! (Video)

Dry River Pool

We are lucky to have the Odelouca River cut its way through part of our land, you notice I didn’t use the term run through our land. Usually, sometime in June the river runs dry and remains dry until the heavy Autumn rains kick-start it flowing at the end of October, beginning of November. We are up-stream of the Barragem do Odelouca which provides drinking water for the Algarve.

It’s the end of October and so far there hasn’t been any significant rain to make any difference. All around the river banks both on and near our land have well established tracks that wildlife use to access the river and for a while I have been wanting to set up my Bushnell trail camera to see what frequents the river.

At various meanders and bends on the river, pools form and stay deep enough all year for the aquatic life to seek refuge of the dry river bed. Of course, these pools not only provide drinking water for other wildlife, but food.

One of the tracks leading to the river passes under a wire fence and I took a look at some hair that had been caught. To be honest, I had no idea, but took a guess at Otters.

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Greater Flamingos of the Algarve

Yesterday myself and partner took a trip to Ria de Alvor. Although it was for a picnic and for me to Kayak around the fantastic estuary at Alvor (video here if you are interested), I took my camera and 300mm lens (remembering that my 500mm is still out for repair).

Ria de Alvor is a nature reserve and home to many different birds including the Greater Flamingo.

The adult Flamingos were not in a great position and difficult to get to photograph, however, some of the younger birds were very close to the paths. I also had a 1.7x Teleconverter with me to take the 300mm to 500mm and although the quality isn’t as great as the 500mm lens, still a good backup.

As you can see, they are not pink!?!? Greater Flamingo’s plumage only turn pink after a few years as an adult, these youngsters are yet to turn.

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(Young) Greater Flamingo - Phoenicopterus roseus

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Red Rumped Swallows at the Quinta

The Red Rump Swallows nest here at our “Quinta” and will be getting ready to leave soon. They arrive later than the other Swallows and Swifts and also leave slightly later too.

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Red Rumped Swallow - D810, AF-S 300mm f/2.8 @ 300mm, f/8, ISO320, 1/2000sec - {Flickr Link}

They are a little larger than the Barn Swallow and as the name suggests have a rusty coloured rump (which gets darker with age). Their nests are different too with a tunnel entrance. This year, they occupied the same nest as last year, but decided to add an extension to the tunnel. You can see the darker colour of the entrance in the photo below;

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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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The Bee Eaters gave up on the nesting site………but moved just a few hundred metres away!

There has been no activity at the “hole” for a few days and it seems as though the Bee Eaters gave up building there. Possibly due to the ground being quite hard. This morning, I was up before the sun and thought I’d go and hide myself in an area they seemed to like to catch their food near the river that flows through our land.

To my surprise, I stumbled across their new nesting site and the earth seems a lot softer. The crazy thing is, it’s in a bank which is only there due to a public dirt track that cuts through to cross the river.

Not many vehicles use it, but it is a way through to some of the houses on the other side of the river. I hid myself away under my bag hide and waited.

Once the sun was up, the Bee Eaters came and spent about 2 hours catching food. The males living up to their reputation for giving anything large to their female partners to eat. Eventually, after a 2 and half hour wait, they started to come down to the nest sites to continue their excavation work.

There was some thick cloud cover this morning so the light wasn’t the greatest, but I was determined to just sit and watch and snap some pictures, albeit not with an ideal exposure.

Here is one of a male (I think, due to the yellow shoulders) at it’s nest hole.

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European Bee Eater - Abelharuco

It’s not really viable to leave my pop-up hide in this location, so I’m going to knock up a temporary small wooden hide I can place here, watch this space!

European Bee Eaters Nest Building (Video)

Yesterday morning I managed to get to the “hole” where the Abelharucos (Portuguese for Bee Eaters) have been building their tunnels and place a Bushnell NatureView Camera to capture any more visits.

I woke up this morning and stepped outside to drink my (required) morning Coffee to a loud reception of Bee Eater chatter. They were all gathered on trees surrounding the “hole”.

This evening I managed to swap the memory card in the camera and couldn’t believe how much footage was recorded from the 2 days.

I have used a small selection to create this short film of them busy building. As you can see it seems that the whole colony is building tunnels, which is normal behaviour.

European Bee Eaters make tunnels around 1 meter long with a chamber at the end where the female will lay between 5 and 8 eggs. It’s obvious from the film that it takes a longtime to complete, around 20 days.

The clips are a selection from the 2 days, towards the end, the light levels improve as the bank is South West facing so keep watching to really appreciate the stunning colours of these birds.

{Remember to watch in HD if possible}

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