With the start of the breeding season all the colourful birds are back to their breeding grounds in front of our hides and are living their busy days to produce offspring there while the photographers can take the opportunity and spend some exhilarating time with them.
This year photographing Rollers were a highlight as no less then 4 hides were making it possible with different set-up, background and of course individuals.
The Red-footed Falcon tower hides were active and provided the usual quality of actions and chances for anyone trying its luck up there. Several pairs of this magnificent raptor species were breeding at the hide in the company of Kestrels, Jackdaws and a pair of Rollers. Later in the summer Lesser Grey Shrike was turning up regularly here, however the hide dedicated to this single species was providing much better opportunities on them.
Red-backed Shrikes are common in the area but having them in front of the hide takes some patience – but is always rewarding. Our dedicated hide for this species was operated successfully during the season from middle of May until they fledged all their chicks for the year.
Our Pygmy Cormorant Hide complex (one hide with a panoramic glass facing the open water and a smaller hide near by in the reedbed for the skulkers) was active as well. Waterfowl and Cormorants were attending regularly and in the reedbed some really special species provided excellent opportunity for photography. Little Crake is sometimes even hard to see not mentioning photographic possibilities, but here they were showing some real intimate moments from their lives.
The most colourful of all species appearing in the region is the Bee-eater. Our hide near a colony of almost a hundred pairs had all kind of actions you would expect from them. Bird were gifting each other and feeding a great variety of flying insects to the chicks in the holes later starting from small flying ants to huge butterflies.
Two hides in the area are set up for Little Owl and this cute little creature was doing its best to put itself on decent photographs – even attended in front of the hides in the middle of the day several times.
Our side project was to test the possibility of photographing Wryneck in the Zemplén Hills. As the area is not too far away from the Hortobágy, a whole day excursion up the hills is worth trying to get this ant-eating specialist. Using mobile tents we successfully established the methods for photographing them.
At last but not the least our mobile Shorebird Hide was in use until mid-July and starting the operation in early Spring with the opportunity on migrant wader species it was finished with all the breeding species attending in front of the glass in the breeding season.
Bird Photography & Birdwatching in the Hortobágy 