Nov 12, 2014
I've spent the day catching up on some of the backlog of images that need key wording before going to my agency and came across this shot taken earlier in the year of a European Bee Eater with a Dragonfly. Now that it's pretty grim weather out there, it's nice to think back to sunnier times over summer.
(Image: Canon EOS 1DX, EF500mm f/4L IS II + 1.4x III, 1/2000 sec @ f/8, ISO 1250, tripod, hide)
I spent a couple of early mornings in an abandoned quarry in Northern Hungary where a Bee Eater colony was busy with courtship rituals and nest preparation. Bee Eaters are fairly obliging and will happily land on a strategically positioned perching stick to eat their freshly caught prey, so it was quite a busy time for the photographer. The quarry site was excellent as it had a variety of different backgrounds that I could use to get very different images from the same spot - always helpful when you are supplying image agencies. The images below were all taken at the same spot as the first one, a few minutes apart, using perches that had been set up to take advantage of each background.
(Image: Canon EOS 1DX, EF500mm f/4L IS II + 1.4x III, 1/800 sec @ f/8, ISO 800, tripod, hide).
(image: Canon EOS 1DX, EF500mm f/4L IS II + 1.4x III, 1/2000 sec @ f/6.3, ISO 1600, tripod, hide)