TomKal foto

For long-tailed widowbird, blue crane and turacos it would be probably worth going back to South Africa to take better pictures. Long-tailed widowbirds males in the mating season have disproportionately long tail feathers. They are so extremely long compared to the rest of its body, that they seem to be apparently inconvenient in flight. Fortunately, in the area most frequently seen bird predators were amur falcons, mostly interested in large insects. Otherwise the long-tailed widowbird would be an easy prey. It is interesting that they often sat on a barbed wire fences and never became entangled with their tail in the blade wire while taking-off. Long-tailed widowbirds are very territorial and could be seen trying to chase away the meadows the other birds which were feeding there. They were running them on the ground and raced them in the air. Shooting long-tailed widowbirds is not easy. They always kept quite a considerable distance, but it happened that slowly approaching the bird when it was feeding we could come closer and then was the short moment when my reflexes and speed of autofocus was challenged. Sometimes I was able to take a satisfactory photos out of the car. As it works in nature photography, it is a case of many, many attempts until such an individual is found that is not skittish at all but even intrigued by our presence, thus good pictures might happen. So it was with the turaco and also I was lucky with the long-tailed widowbird. Although I assessed the gallery as the most interesting (I managed to record a sound as well), as I recall its flight I regret not devoting more time to the bird – it is amazing and difficult to capture. The difficulty relates to its dynamic behavior and its coloration. Only cloudy days and subdued light, and at the same time a sufficient amount of light (short times) gave a chance to take good pictures. A long-tailed widowbirds were not rare. We saw them on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and they appeared along several-kilometers route to Wakkerstroom. I hope that these few images you can see in the gallery show the charm of this bird, although it occurs to me more and more often that I think about filming...