Exploring Extremadura: Day 5 - Steppe Winds

I had an early start on day 5 of the trip as it would be my turn to try for Little Bustard and I would be taken to the hide in the dark. While getting ready at the hotel I decided to step out onto the balcony and there was a strong, cold wind blowing. It felt more like the UK than Spain and given the forthcoming immobility in the hide decided on a double fleece layer. This was to prove a good decision as it turned out to be very cool later in the hide.

After a short drive and a short walk across grassland in the pitch black, I was in the hide. The hide was very small and once again I was locked in for the duration.

It was an odd feeling being inside surrounded by pitch black with the only sound being  the relentless wind. Slowly it began to lighten and slowly I could start to make out some vague shapes and textures in the surroundings. The light increased further as dawn gathered pace and I could now thankfully see I was in a different hide to the one Steve had been in the preceding day. To my left was an area of flowering grassland while in front of the longer grass to the right, a small area had been cut short.

I waited for the light to improve and could start to just hear, through the wind,  the birds of this Spanish steppe starting to call. I was listening for a particular short clicking call which would signal the presence of Little Bustard. All was quiet and the hide was cold.

The light was now good with the rising sun and while I waited the camera was put to its first use of the day when a Crested Lark briefly alighted on a nearby close boulder.

I heard the noise I had been waiting for off to my right within the flowering grassland. Someone in there was a Little Bustard and it took a while before I managed to see the bird. A brief but fairly distance glimpse of its head and dark black neck poking above the long-vegetation. The next call was much closer and eventually a small turkey-like bird stepped into view.

This was my first view of Little Bustard and it slowly moved around while throwing its head back on its black and white banded neck to make its distinctive call.

To give an idea of the bird and its call I made a short video clip. As you can see the wind continued to blow Well

Little Bustard in Spain from Richard Steel on Vimeo.

One interesting part of Little Bustard behaviour is the males in the breeding display do small jumps into the air, above the long grasses, to advertise their presence. I was hoping to capture this behaviour but this male had other ideas and only jumped once during my whole visit. Fortunately it did this jump in a nice setting and I managed to capture a single image which was good as it took me completely by surprise.

Another photographer who was further down the valley in another hide had a male jumping around in front of his hide like it was tied to a pogo stick in front of his hide.

Given the lack of display leaping I had to make do with portrait images as the bird strutted around its territory,

At one time the bird came up right next to the hide. Interesting to see the bird at really close quarters as sat quietly in the small freezing cube. After a while the bird skulked back into the long vegetation to the left.

It was great to see the bird and a memorable experience.  A shame I did not get to see more of the display hops but it had been a much better session than Steve's disaster with the long vegetation the previous day. Steve over in the Hoopoe hide had done well and I was pleased the Turtle Dove had put in an appearance for him.

I welcomed the arrival of the car to collect me in the late morning as by this point I was freezing cold from the biting wind and lack of movement and very uncomfortable having been stuck in a very small hide for a prolonged period.

After lunch we took a drive round some local farm tracks in the car but all the birds seemed to be lying low in the strong cold winds. After a couple of hours of fruitless effort we decided to give up and call it a day.

Exploring Extremadura: Day 4 - Hoopoes and Wind

Steve and I were going in separate directions very early in the morning on the 4th day. He was heading off to try Little Bustard, more of that later in this post, and I was booked in for a session with some Hoopoe. I was met by a brisk and surprisingly cold wind as I stepped out of the hotel to be whisked off to the Hoopoe hide. Steve was already long since departed to get into his hide during darkness.

Once more I was locked into a small wooden hide which was setup behind some old derelict farm buildings. Looking out front and there was an area of grassland with well spaced trees, with the nearest tree having an obvious perched wedged into its base, just below a hole where the birds were nesting. An overcast sky only providing some fairly 'flat' light.  The general limited activity suggested the female, which only made one brief appearance for a stretch during my time in the hide, was still sitting on eggs in the base of tree.

The male bird was out foraging and would occasionally return with a small grub to pass into the unseen female.

The low frequency of visits made attempting any flight shots impractical. The light did improve towards the end of the session but rapidly became side-lit at that point.  Having taken a few photographs of the male bird on the single perch there was not much else to do. Before me was certainly not a very imaginative setup conducive to obtaining a variety of images.

As some you will know I am not the greatest fan of the fixed hides particularly when little thought has been put into the setup in front of it greatly limiting photograph opportunities. With this hide it was obvious after the first 30 minutes I was not going to get any different images to those already on the memory card.

The increasing frustration with the setup as time passed was broken by the welcome arrival of a Turtle Dove. This was the first one of these beautiful birds that had ever been seen from this hide and was only present briefly on the solitary perch.

After around 4 hours in the hide the sound of an approaching vehicle to collect me was a welcome one. It had not been one of the most enjoyable hide sessions.

I sent Steve a text to give him an update. It seemed that it wasn't going to well at his end. He had to walk out to a tiny hide in the middle of huge field in darkness. As the light dawned he realised he was surrounded by 0.75m high grass waving in the stiff cold breeze. The only view he got of the Little Bustard was brief glimpses of its head through waving grass stems making getting any photographs impossible. He was not in the best of moods when he returned to the hotel. Again another example of a poor thought put into the setup.

Given the ever strengthening and cooling wind we decided to cancel the afternoon hide booking and just go out in the car around some local farm tracks to see if we could find some birds to photograph. It quickly became obvious that the strong winds had suppressed bird activity and despite slowly driving around many kilometers of farm track the only birds we could find within photography distance were the occasional Corn Bunting and Crested Lark.

Overall not our most successful day. What would tomorrow bring as Steve was heading to the Hoopoe hide and I was destined for one of the Little Bustard hides. Hopefully I would be put in a different one to which Steve had been placed that morning which turned out to be useless from a photography perspective.

Roaming in Romania - Day 9: Full Circle

Four weary photographers head forth on the final session of our photography tour of Romania. Three of us had opted for another session with the technicolour bee-eaters whilst Michael decided to go off stalking larks and bunting in the minibus with Zoltan. The two temporary hides was set-up once again next to the sandbank with the bee-eater colony with Hans in one and Rene and I sharing the other. I had decided for this session I would try and get some bee-eater flight photos as I have none in my library at the moment. I took a couple of portrait photos, while waiting for the light to increase,  before getting down to the business of some flight images.

Being squashed into a pop-up hide with someone else whilst trying to do flight photos is not ideal or particularly easy so all you can do is try and make best of the session and I managed to come away with a few photos before the minibus returned to collect us.

Our final moments of the trip with the cameras were spent near trying to photograph some Spanish sparrow around a car park area and some kind of visitors centre. However, my attention was drawn to a Crested Lark gathering insects  and also a very dirty looking Stork that passed very close by on slow powerful wing beats with a beak full of nest material.

As we drove back to the main road we came across a couple of yellow wagtails and a Great Reed Warbler. The latter kept climbing songs before bursting into its loud warble. This proved to be my last photograph of the trip. I had finished the visit to Romania photographing the same species as my first photographs in the country. I had gone full circle and the trip was complete.

It was just a question now of the the minibus journey back to Bucharest, two flights back to Manchester and a car journey home. I finally got home around 9:30pm in the evening having gained 2 hours time difference en route.

Overall it had been a very memorable trip. I had enjoyed it as the photographs did not always come easily and you had to work to get the images but that made it all the more rewarding. I also really liked the mobile aspect of this trip rather than being locked down in fixed hides for a week on standard perch set-ups. Eastern Europe really is a wonderful place for the bird photographer and I will definitely be returning again in the future.

So to finish off I would like to express my thanks to:

• Zoltan for working tirelessly to make sure all went smoothly and using his magic bird locating powers. 
• To the boatman for his excellent boat handling skills on the Danube Delta.
• Rene, Hans and Michael for being such excellent company on the trip.
• To Sakertours for another superb and extremely well organised trip. 

Thanks for following me on my roamings around Romania and I will be returning to some UK mammals in my next post.

Roaming in Romania - Day 8: Blood Donor

The last words from Zoltan the previous evening were to make sure we applied some insect repellent the next day as we may encounter a few mosquitoes. So when I rose at 5am, I liberally doused myself in Avon SSS dry oil assured by the claims that no midge or mosquito would come anywhere near me. Our first destination for the day was the lagoons as Vadu on the edge of the Black Sea and the target bird was Collared Pratincole. This is an unusual but attractive bird that is classed a wader despite it not really looking much like one. The approach was going to be stalking on foot, or more accurately should I say on stomach, as we crawled our way through strange coloured salt marsh vegetation to photograph the birds in the soft early light.

As we stepped into the dry basin like lagoon, clouds of mosquitoes erupted off the short vegetation. I suspect these mosquitoes had recently flown in from the east of Romania having been under some intensive training at the Vlad the Impaler school of blood sucking in Transylvania. The supposed repellent properties of the Avon oil was useless and the mosquitoes were instantly enjoying a good corpuscle breakfast at my expense. I reckoned I could take about 30 -40 minutes of this blood draining onslaught. We soon got in amongst the Pratincole that were glowing in soft dawn light. After taking some portrait photos and some of the birds in flight it was time to beat a hasty retreat before forced anaemia took hold. During my brief time in the 'mosquito lagoon' I had managed to accumulate over 80 bites on my forearms and hands to add to the ones all round my head and face. The suffering was worth it to finally get some photos of these birds.

These birds look quite unusual in flight and look even less like waders than when on the ground with their swallow like tails.

We were soon back in the minibus and heading back up the road to a large area of rolling grassland near our hotel at Sinhoe , part of which was being used as a local rubbish dump, where we would spend the rest of the morning. Here we split into two groups with Rene and I taking first shift on some temporary hides that we set-up next to a Bee-eater colony whilst Hans and Michael toured around the grass plains looking for Souslik and other birds.

Setting up next to the Bee-eater colony.

I love photographing bee-eaters as not only are they such obviously incredibly beautiful with their rainbow plumage but there is always plenty of activity with birds coming back and forth to the colony with various insects they have plucked from the sky. The following photographs are a selection taken during a relatively brief but productive session. I do not apologise for posting quite a few images of these wonderful birds.

Birds of a feather stick together.

Sharing a butterfly for breakfast

The early morning ruffled look.

Coming in to land

Perched amongst the short grasses of the plains

The last moments of a dragonfly

It was all to soon to swap our hide places with Hans and Michael and we were heading along the dirt tracks looking for some Souslik to photograph. The light was starting to get harsh now and the heat haze starting to develop. I lay down next to a fairly active looking burrow and sure enough after a short wait was rewarded with the ground squirrel appearing.

After spending some time there, slowly baking in the sun, we carried on and found some more Souslik feeding away on wall barley heads.

On our trail around these grasslands we also picked up a few birds including Hoopoe, Juvenile Isabelline Wheatear and a Crested Lark that was perched on top of a dry stone wall.

It has been a very enjoyable morning, despite the mosquito bites now starting to get itchy, and we headed back to the hotel for some lunch and the by now routine afternoon siesta before heading out on our final late afternoon and evening session.