Hoopoe

The funny thing about the Hoopoe is that it is one of those birds that if you go looking for them you will never find them.  They are common here on Fuerteventura, although less so at this time of year when I think they must be sitting, and yet I have really struggled to find one to photograph.

So this afternoon we were just out for a walk doing a loop of Montana Negra near La Oliva when Jennifer cries out “Abubilla” and sure enough pecking around in a relic field near a run-down goat farm was todays subject (this is exactly the kind of habitat they appear to prefer) – fortunately I had the G9 and PL 100-400 with me (this is the big advantage of m43 – you can carry it just in case) so I set to work.

Hoopoes will let you get so close, maybe 10m, and then fly, but they won’t fly far, just a few metres, as if they were playing with you – so you move and they move and so it goes on in this case until he settled on a rock behind a chain-link fence which annoyingly meant I couldn’t get to birds eye level without shooting through the fence which I think is the cause of the odd bokeh in the second image.  I never, unless I absolutely have to, photograph birds on the ground from a standing position, such shots invariably look rubbish and you have no chance of throwing the background out of focus.

On the subject of the second image you will see a rare colour in the Fuerteventura landscape – Green – I have never seen the island looking as green as it does now, a function of the frankly rubbish weather that we have had for the last month or so.

Anyway I did the best I could and came up with a couple of half decent images – as usual click on them to see them bigger.