There are some birds that, by their very nature, are difficult to get close to. Then there are others that seem on a species level to be tolerant of vehicles and great white lenses sticking out of them!
European bee-eaters fall into that former group but their cousins, the Southern Carmine, is definitely a paid up member of the latter.
We have had unusually heavy rains and Hwange is looking like the Okavango delta. There is water everywhere! I was crossing what used to be a road (now a waterway) when a juvenile Carmine bee-eater landed on a small bush not 3m from my truck with a dragonfly in its beak. I sat there for quite a while as it flashed away to catch insect after insect above the flooded grasses. I could pre-focus on the stick it preferred and as i saw it arriving in my periphery I would hit the shutter button. I set up the 5D with an aperture of f8 so as to get the whole bird in focus, gave it a large ISO to allow a fast shutter speed and loved the result.
The Hwange Birder
European bee-eaters fall into that former group but their cousins, the Southern Carmine, is definitely a paid up member of the latter.
We have had unusually heavy rains and Hwange is looking like the Okavango delta. There is water everywhere! I was crossing what used to be a road (now a waterway) when a juvenile Carmine bee-eater landed on a small bush not 3m from my truck with a dragonfly in its beak. I sat there for quite a while as it flashed away to catch insect after insect above the flooded grasses. I could pre-focus on the stick it preferred and as i saw it arriving in my periphery I would hit the shutter button. I set up the 5D with an aperture of f8 so as to get the whole bird in focus, gave it a large ISO to allow a fast shutter speed and loved the result.
The Hwange Birder
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