European Bee eater

Compliments of the season to all of you and mega apologies for not updating this blog for such a long time. I was out sailing for the last 8 months, on what was suppose to be a 4 months call of duty. On the brighter side, It was an lovely opportunity to photograph some beautiful migratory birds that landed on board my ship.My ship was trading in the Mediterranean and black sea and most of the birds I encountered were the ones migrating from Europe to Africa or vice-versa.For the next couple of days I will post photographs of some of these birds and will now start with my first encounter that happened on May The bird was the colourful European Bee eater (Merops apiaster), a bird which breeds in southern Europe or north Africa . It migrates and spends its winter in Tropical Africa reaching all the way to India and Sri Lanka. It is a very rare visitor to India but there are many sightings of this bird in India.
Like all other Bee eaters this one too prefers flying insects and lets alone insects that have landed.
Poor light made photography difficult when these colourful birds landed on board, nevertheless, it was a pleasure watching such rainbow of colours flying all around. Its nearly useless having a tripod on board a ship, the vibrations of the engine are transmitted onto the camera, via the tripod making sharp images at slow shutter speed nearly impossible. Hand held camera shots are the only solution and eight months on board with no tripod did help me to improve my hand held images.