Blue tailed bee eaters, like other bee-eaters, is a colorful, slender bird. It is predominantly green; its face has a narrow blue patch with a black eye stripe, and a yellow and brown throat; the tail is blue and the beak is black. It is widely distributed across South and Southeast Asia.
I took some good bee eater photos, especially blue tailed bee eaters. But almost all of the photos were stationary, a bee eater perched on a bare branch.
A perfect bee eater photo would be the bird has a bee or other insect in its beak with wings expanded.
Two weeks ago I went to Hampstead wetland park for the sole purpose of bird watching.
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| A blue tailed bee eater |
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| Hampstead wetland |
There were quite a few birds there, blue tailed bee eaters come and go - resting on the snag tree in the middle of the pond. Great for taking bird pictures.
A bee easter or two would rest on the snag tree, and take off to catch bugs. I took a few good stationary pictures. Then I decided to try to take a prefect photo of the blue tailed bee eaters.
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| the blue tail |
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| red-brownish throat |
Initially I tried to take a picture of the bird taking off with wings expanded. It is extremely hard to take such photo on a single shoot. I changed the exposure setting to continuous shooting. But my timing of its take off was not good enough.
I then changed to try to capture a bee eater's return to the snag tree, aiming my lens at its favorite perch. I got some good shoots, but not good enough.
After a couple more tries without success, I stopped taking pictures and analyzed the situation. I concluded that it was too late to push the shutter button when the bird appeared in the viewfinder. So I decided to push the shutter button before the bird reached its perch, a few yards away from its perch, outside of my camera's view.
In so doing, I found out that the bird fly to its perch from below, land on the perch, balance itself upon landing by flapping its wings, before getting the hold of the perch
I finally got the perfect picture the blue tailed bee eater: a bee in its beak with wings expanded.
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| my perfect photo of a blue tailed bee eater |
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| a bee in its beak |
