Northern Botswana enjoys a well-deserved reputation amongst wildlife photographers as being one of the better locations for taking good pictures of beautiful birds as well as large mammals. The carmine bee-eater could well be one of the bird species that contributes to this perception with its bright colours, pleasing shape and dynamic behaviour.
Carmine bee-eaters are summer visitors to their Southern African range, and they are typically only present in North Botswana from late August onwards, departing the region sometime in March or April the following year.
Some carmine bee-eaters have developed the interesting behaviour of following large mammals that might be walking along in grassland. They do this because the large animal may disturb insects as it moves along, that would otherwise have remained hidden in the grass. As soon as these insects fly up ahead of the big animal, the bee-eaters will go after them in the air. I have seen carmine bee-eaters ‘using’ buffalo, elephant, warthog and zebra in this manner. Not all carmine bee-eaters show this behaviour, though. It is most interesting to observe. What is still more interesting, at least to me, is that some carmine bee-eaters have learned to do the same thing when a vehicle passes by. Again, it is not every carmine bee-eater that will follow a moving vehicle through grassland and it is also not something that happens in every place (in North Botswana at least) where carmine bee-eaters are present and vehicles drive past.
There is one area where this behaviour has been happening reliably for me though, every year since I began visiting, and that is Kwando Safaris Lagoon camp. The camp is situated along the bank of a channel linked to the Kwando River and within a protected area (NG 14), a private concession are that extends over 200 000 hectares. That the carmine beee-eaters often breed in this concession is good news for the birds, because the Kwando NG 14 concession is well preserved and pristine habitat.
The carmine bee-eaters behaviour of following vehicles seems to happen most strongly in the months of January and February and less strongly in December and March. The behaviour makes it possible to capture some very strong bird in flight images of the carmines. The birds come very close, and may sometimes end up being as about a metre or two away from the vehicle. They sometimes also keep on flying close beside the vehicle for a while. The close proximity of the carmines as well as the their persistence (some might fly beside the jeep for perhaps more than 20 seconds mean that some very unusual photo opportunities become a possibility.
It’s a somewhat unusual photographic experience in that the birds are flying towards the photographer and they carry out that behaviour repeatedly. Mostly I find that a lot of wild birds usually prefer flying away from the photographer (understandably) and normally only do things once. So I find that the ‘following’ behaviour of the carmines makes it much, much easier to get good flight images. Another benefit of photographing the ‘follower’ carmines is that they often come so close to the jeep that I can use smaller lenses. The smaller lenses that I use most are my 24-105mm and 70-200mm focal lengths. Two benefits that come with using the shorter lenses are that they are lighter to handhold and easier to swivel, turn and track with. Both of these aspects have added importance because the photography all takes place while the vehicle is being driven, as slowly and smoothly as possible, but still in motion.
The bee-eaters come so close to the vehicle that it is possible to still get strongly blurred backgrounds for some flight shots, that would be more like what one would expect when using 500mm or 600mm lenses.
The carmine bee-eaters go after dragonflies (bottom right in the image above) but more often grasshoppers, butterflies, moths, mantids and many other types of insects. With smaller insects, the bird might swallow it almost at the same time as it catches the insect. Carmines that catch larger bugs quite often will slow down their flight a little, and gain some height before attempting to reposition the insect in the perfect position to be swallowed.
I have realized that the experienced carmine bee-eaters fly higher than normal when swallowing large prey. This is in order to give themselves a second chance of catching it in the air before it falls to the ground, should they drop it.
Some carmine bee-eaters are so successful at catching insects whilst following the jeep, that they might catch three or four different ones in a single, long flight. These birds can be good ones to target for photography because they give the photographer a higher likelihood of capturing an image of a bird with prey in the picture or the bill.
Getting so many chances to photograph the carmines in flight means that it is possible to try for different types of image. In this blog post I have posted just a sampling of the type of images that are possible.
Aside from the more typical bird in flight images with a blurred background it is also possible to frame with more of the environment in the image, as evident in the first image right at the beginning of this blog post.
I was unable to get an image of a Kwando safaris game drive vehicle driving along with the bee-eaters following it, because if I had gotten out of the vehicle, they would have been disturbed. I only had need of such an image to illustrate this behaviour better for the blog post.
Despite not having an illustrative image of the vehicle taken from another vehicle, I hope that the images and behaviour in this blog post will go some way toward encouraging bird and action photographers to visit the carmine bee-eaters and get some ‘follower’ carmine bee-eater pictures and experiences of their own! It is certainly a unique relationship that has developed between the birds and vehicles. It also makes it possible to experience the carmine bee-eaters incredible agility in the air and from an extremely close distance!
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