Hungary Birds of Prey trip report 3 of 3

This will be the third and last trip report from the Hungary Birds of Prey tour 2015. The two full days were spent in the Eagle hide on the Great Hungarian Plains with hope of capturing eagle action while the last half day was spent in the Garden hide for me and Peter while Frode and Kenny tried the Hawfinch hide.

The first of the days in the Eagle hide brought heavy clouds that made us work hard for the money so to speak. The condition with dull light coupled with the feeling that the camera didn’t get the sharpness right was not fun at all especially as we had three Imperial Eagles flying around the hide trying to stop the two White-tailed Eagles from coming down to feed. It was an interesting spectacle to see, but unfortunately we couldn’t get any really good photos due to the conditions outside the hide.

The spectacle wasn’t long-lived, but the juvenile White-tailed appeared once again later just to be scared away by Rooks on site. I suppose that several hundred Rooks flying away at the same time would spook even older birds that this young White-tailed Eagle even if it felt like it was easily disturbed.

Zoltán managed to give us an extra shot on the Eagles, we were just booked for three sessions, which was much appreciated. I think we all had felt that we should have had the juvenile White-tailed Eagle feeding in front of the hide if it hadn´t been spooked by the Rooks. This feeling was correct as we soon had two Eagles around the hide and this time it was just the juvenile and adult White-tailed Eagles. This time around the light condition was better resulting in improved photos from the day before.

It all ended with the adult sitting in the tree by the hide trying to persuade the juvenile to get down to the smorgasbord in front of the hide. I am not sure if it was all the bickering from the parent or the empty stomach that made up the mind for the young one. We saw that it was a little on the edge when it landed on the ground so we had to be careful not to scare it. Therefore we let it start to eat before we began to take single shots. Now the low-angle windows came to use again as the bird stayed on ground eating for a long period.

We were fortunate that the bird stayed for such a long time and even came backdown on the ground after it got spooked. It felt like it was a good ending to the hard days that eagle photography usually is. I am a little sad that we never had any Imperial Eagles on ground, but to see three at the same time the day before was really great.

Our last day was spent in the Garden hide with hope for the Eurasian Sparrowhawk. It did appear three times, but it was camera shy leaving us without any good photos of this small raptor. Instead, we could take portrait photos of a Common Buzzard that landed just a meter or two from the hide. Not the species we wanted, but that’s nature.

Please enjoy the gallery from the last days of the Hungary Birds of Prey tour 2015.