bird Archives - Page 10 of 13 - Craig Rogers Photography

Photos Of The Kingfisher At The River Pool

10th November 201729th December 2017Craig Rogers

This morning, I was up at sunrise, drank a coffee, took the dog for a walk, had breakfast and then headed down to the Kingfisher Hide I built yesterday. Portuguese for Kingfisher is Guarda-rios, but translates to River Ranger/Guard.

I approached slowly and quietly and the perch was not empty, the Kingfisher was already there. I stopped, it stopped, we stared at each other for what felt like an hour but was probably more like 5 seconds before it flew away. I made sure that it had cleared the area totally before approaching the hide. I didn’t want to scare it away for good.

I squeezed into the hide and set myself up for a long wait. The long wait wasn’t needed, within about 5 minutes the Kingfisher was back but it looked a little confused, it knew something had changed and it flew to the next river pool about 25 metres away. I sat and watched it dive into the water catching small fish and eating them. At this moment, I really couldn’t care if it didn’t come to the perch, I was happy enough just sitting there watching it. However, soon enough it came back to the perch and didn’t seem bothered of my presence, although I was well hidden. It was a very still morning, not even a breeze so my next concern was the noise of the shutter, would it scare it. The D810 was in “quiet” mode which tries to limit the noise of the shutter, I fired off a shot, it didn’t disturb the bird at all.

I spent the next hour sat there watching it dive, sometimes successful, sometimes not. It did have a good feed. I waited until breakfast was over and it flew away before leaving. I was using my 300mm f/2.8 lens fitted with a 1.7 teleconverter as I still await the return of my 500mm f/4 from repair. I’m pretty happy with the quality of the shots considering, but looking forward to the return of my 500mm f/4. The only problem I see is getting into the hide with the size of the 500mm f/4. My next goal is to capture a usable shot of the Kingfisher with a fish in its mouth, I did get some, but not good enough.

At first, I thought this was a Male Kingfisher due to the lack of orange lower beak. However, on closer look, I think this is a juvenile Female as there is a little colour appearing underneath.

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Otter At Our River! (Video)

24th October 201724th October 2017Craig Rogers

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.

Greater Flamingos of the Algarve

4th October 20179th October 2017Craig Rogers

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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Red Rumped Swallows at the Quinta

16th September 20179th October 2017Craig Rogers

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;

Bee Eater Nesting Is Underway (Video)

10th June 20178th May 2019Craig Rogers

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}

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

4th May 20179th October 2017Craig Rogers

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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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!