Vultures and Red Kites in the Pyrenees November 2011
Kev DuRose and myself went of a three day trip to the Spanish Pyrenees to photograph Griffons and hopefully Lammergeier from a hide run by PhotoLogistics https://www.photo-logistics.com/ . The weather was amazing with full sun every day but we had to be in the hide at first light and stay there until dusk. The vultures are fed meat waste from local abattoirs that is put out regularly so the birds become habituated to being fed but even so the Griffons are very wary and only came down on a couple of occasions while two Lammergeier did put in an appearance one afternoon but they did not land to feed. Red Kites were the other species which was in abundance providing amazing photo opportunities and there was a resident Thekla Lark which also added to the species variety along with the local Ravens which in the superb light and clear air produced my best ever photos of that species.
The hide has one way glass and is very comfortable inside but I was concerned at the thought of taking images through glass of any kind but my fears were unfounded and the results I think show that this had no impact upon the quality f the images.
I only took my Canon 300 2.8 lens along with a 1.4x converter using my Canon 1D4 for most of the shots but I took the wide angle shots with a a Canon 5D2 and 24-105mm lens.
Kev and the vulture hide
