I have been eager to take photos of Long-legged Buzzards for years but it is not so simple since these beautiful birds, according to their name, really prefer open, treeless areas where it is rather problematic to use a mobile photo hide successfully. Thus, I haven’t made any attempt until recently.

There are specimens in every species which are less bothered by the human presence than their conspecifics. This time I was lucky to take photos of an adult Long-legged Buzzard of such. It spent hours close to my hide carefully preening its plumage feather by feather. It was a perfect day, the illumination of the tree and the Buzzard changed very nicely during the day as the hue of the blue background did from royalblue to lightblue.

Many birds close their eyes during preening but this bird took its time and left closed its eyes after preening i.e. slept on the branch in front of me. I tried to do so more or less successfully in spite of my position in the hide I would not call comfortable…

An interesting moment was when I realized that I left my spare memory cards at home. It has never happened to me to date! Never mind, I asked my brother-in-law for bringing them to me if he had had any business on the way through Eger. I was lucky, it happened that Jóska could deliver my cards (thanks very much again!).

At that moment when I left the hide for picking up the cards the LL Buzzard was not on the tree but later I realized that it was watching me from a nearby tree. Since I had nothing to lose I decided to return to the hide while the bird was circling up around. After a quarter of an hour the bird perched again in front of me…

It defended that particular tree vigorously from Common Buzzards and showed clear territorial behaviour like wing-flapping, calling and so. The tree is situated between a large plough land and a grassland mosaic and it is in 200-meter distance from the nearest shelterbelt.

Unfortunately, in December 2007 I found an electrocuted LL Buzzard less than one kilometre from this site. Since then sometimes I have observed two wintering LLBs together there. There is an image of a full adult female in the LLB gallery showing the moment when a Common Buzzard attacked her.

This was a very nice experience, hope you will like the images!

Wishing you such great moments.

Regards, András

We visited the Heves Plain grasslands for checking resident and migrating birds of prey on 16th September with my friend Péter Tóth.
I think there were relatively few raptors there to the season, probably because of the low prey availability due to the extreme dry weather for months.

On an alfalfa land I could take some closer images of Red-footed Falcons and when I downloaded them it turned out that one of the young RFFs is colour ringed.There is an aggregation site of RRFs nearby, anyway.

I could read the code of its ring, the bird was ringed by Attila Fülöp near Nagyvárad (Oredea), in Partium, Rumania, 125 km away from the site I photographed it.

The Milvus Group has been managing the breeding site very successfully for years. As a result of artificial nest provision the number of breeding pairs has increased to 33 from 1 since 2003 when the breeding population almost disappeared (http://milvus.ro/ariiprotejate/valea-alceului ).

I uploaded some images of the Falcons into the New Images gallery.

Thanks very much to Attila Nagy and Szilárd Daróczi of Milvus and to Szabolcs Solt and Péter Palatitz of MME for the pieces of information about the bird and the breeding site.

Regards,
András

In early August I found the nest and the fully developed nestling of a Short-toed Eagle pair in South Bükk Mountains.
This territory is one of my favourites because I found it for the first time in 1989 when I started my studies in Eger.

The adults were not aware of my presence so I could take some photos of them through a small canopy window.

Regards,  András

In autumn 2007 while we were driving on the way to Georgia I spotted an adult Imperial Eagle from the motorway in NW Turkey.  At my earlier request Can Bilgin kindly sent me the available historical data for Turkey and from this particular place there had not been any observation about Imperial Eagles before.
We had some time to check the area in two groups and we observed three new pairs at some 40 and 60-km distances from two already known territories.

Since 2009 six expeditions have been organised with the lead of Márton Horváth, MME, in collaboration with Doga Dernegi, the RSPB and BSPB. Altogether 19 new territories were discovered and checked twice a year for their occupancy and breeding success.

In late June and early July I could also take part in the expedition, with Márton, Iván Demeter and Tibor Juhász of Hortobágy National Park.

It rained a lot in the region in early summer and even dry grasslands were green and blossomed and many songbirds sang even daytime.

We checked 20 Imperial Eagle territories, found new nests and I was fortunate enough to locate a completely new pair, the 21st and their nest with chicks in a mountain pine forest from a distance of 3 km with binoculars!

It was an extraordinary experience as the whole trip way really enjoyable!

Regards,   Andras

I have spent 3 months (Apr-June) in Kazakhstan doing fieldwork in an international project. Although it wasn’t about raptors I spent my spare time searching for them and I tried to take pictures as well.
This normally meant the worst part of the day lightwise. I added some new pictures to the next species which can be seen in the ‘New Pictures’ gallery as usual:
Black Kite ‘lineatus’ subspecies, Pallid Harrier, Lesser Kestrel, Long-legged Buzzard, Imperial Eagle, Steppe Eagle, Booted Eagle

I’m planning to write a more detailed note about the area and its raptors illustrated by habitat shots.

Enjoy the pictures!

Gabor

On 23 June I was sitting on our terrace eating cherry and thinking about the matters of life with my camera in my hand because I wanted to take photos of the male Black Redstart that breeds every year under the eaves. It was a real pleasure. The white homing pigeons of a far street neighbour were flying quite unusually when suddenly an adult Peregrine appeared from the right with a white pigeon and flu through our backyard around 30 meters from me and 25 meters high!

Pure pigeon was alive but completely shocked.
I had three seconds to raise the camera and to shoot some images but I could make it and it was really a great moment!

The pigeon miraculously escaped few seconds later being too heavy for the falcon thus the peregrine dropped it.

Regards,     Andras

Besides the regular check of mountain Imperial Eagle territories where we decided not to ring chicks years ago, I spent two days with Márton Horváth, Imre Fatér, Tamás Szitta and other colleagues in the lowlands in mid-June ringing eagles and collecting food remains and feathers.  As in the previous season Attilla Bereczky, a professional tree feller, climbed the trees at extremely fast pace and sent down eaglets to be ringed in a rucksack. This can significantly shorten the length of time and disturbance around the nest.

It was excellent to be at nests that I have known for a long time but usually visit only during ringing. Not to mention the joy of handling eagles!

Thanks to everyone for the company!

Regards,    Andras

Honey Buzzards arrived at their territories in early May and still often perform the distinct “wing-clapping” display flight.
While we attempted to find the nest site of a Lesser Spotted Eagle pairs from a vantage point with my friend Gábor Domboróczki I was lucky and could take closer flight photos about two adult Honey Buzzards. We saw one of the eagles over its assumed nest site too.

I upload some photos to the New images gallery.

Regards,    András

During the last few months I spent a lot of time organizing the Budapest Conference on „Power lines and bird mortality in Europe” under a contract to MME/BirdLife Hungary.
This is an extremely important bird conservation issue since mortality on power lines, due to collision and especially electrocution, has been confirmed as one of the main human-related threats for many bird species, causing the death of tens of thousands of birds of prey every year in Europe alone.

123 representatives from 29 countries participated in the conference.
More details including the presentations and posters of the conference as well as the Budapest Declaration on bird protection and power lines can be found on the MME’s website.

Regards,   András

I took this photo of a young female Peregrine after it had been ringed by Miklós Váczi in the Bükk Mountains on 14 may 2008. The colour ringed bird has recently been identified as the female of one of the breeding pairs in the Pilis Mountains over 120 km west of its natal territory. More info (in Hungarian) and pictures can be found on madarvilag.hu.

Thanks to Mátyás Prommer and Lotár István Molnár for the information.

Regards,   András