Each spring the steppe comes alive with bee-eaters (Merops apiaster). They are migratory species and remain there since the end of April until the end of the first decade of September.
Bee-eaters are not easy to photograph and long lenses are a must and a photographer should have to stay hidden from their field of view.
On last Saturday, when I returned from Romania, I could not resist the urge to see them again. So I take my camera and a tripod and headed south. From my home is just one-hour journey. My lens was too short for a serious photography, so I ended with several pictures with birds small in the frame. I tried to make some videos, because with flashy birds moving around in the frame the information of the place comes across on a viewer more easily.
Here are my results. They are far away from anything professional. They present a point of view of an dedicated amateur with poor photo equipment.
Some images are acceptable only because I cropped them heavily. Though I still think that they transfer to magic of being there on warm sunny afternoon among exotic-looking birds.
Bee-eaters on the Pouzdřany steppe.
Bee-eater (Merops apiaster). In my dreams I see them flying together with Rollers (Corracias garrulus) which disapeared from Central Europe during 1970-80's.
They build nest-holes in a wall of exposed loess, an eolian sediment.
They are definitely beautiful.
And at evening I set up my camera to made a serial of 40 images. I combined them together in Startrails.de program. This resul I call "cloudtrails". ;-)
and the second version of the set of 40 images appears as a timelapse:
In last years I always try to make at least one set of around 50-to-99 pics to make startrails, cloudtrails od timelapses. Its worth of the effort. It takes time and sometimes it means to wake up in the middle of the night. Though I can't resist doing such things. I have done them in the past and want to to them in the future. This is called: passion.