European Bee-eater pair, NIKON D700 and Nikkor 500mm f/4G ED VR, 1/2000 sec at F7.1, manual metering, flash off, ISO 800. Image Copyright 2010 Robert OToole / Robert OToole Photography.
The opportunities during the spring in Europe are amazing and I find myself looking forward to returning each year to lead bird photography workshops. Europe offers quite a number of species that cannot be found in North America. Some of them are my all time favorites and keep me coming back each year. This May we had amazing opportunities for hoopoe, bee-eaters, rollers, raptors and wading birds such as spoonbills. One of the highlights of the trip for me were the two hoopoe nests with chicks. These birds are amazing and hunt from 5:30 am to dark continuously returning to the nest with prey for their chicks (one nest contained seven chicks). We also had very good bee-eater activity between rain storms. This year as with most places I have visited, the weather was unusual. Rainfall was off the chart, many areas in Eastern Europe were flooding at all time high levels. Next year I will be returning to lead two workshops. For more information or if you would like to join us next year, please email me, see the workshop link at the top of this page or follow this link:
You can see more images from the workshops in the latest image gallery:
Hoopoe with prey, NIKON D700 and Nikkor 500mm f/4G ED VR, 1/3200 sec at F5.6, manual metering, flash off, ISO 1600. Image Copyright 2010 Robert OToole / Robert OToole Photography.