Rainbow Bee-eaters are one of my favorite birds to photograph. Each spring they return to my hometown of Brisbane to pair up and nest along banks of the Brisbane River and in doing so, they provide great opportunities for photography. Bee-eaters are gregarious and relatively predictable in terms of behavior, often returning the same perches time and time again while foraging for insects. As a result, they are quite easy to photograph if you choose the right location and don't mind waiting.

In terms of the best time of day to capture them, I have found that the late afternoon produces the best results. Morning works as well, but I have always had more success in the afternoons. I think it has something to do with the way bee-eaters hunt and my observation that they sometimes tend to be late starters in the morning. Bee-eaters position looking into the sun to catch the shadows cast by the insects they catch in flight, so from 3 o'clock onwards in the southern hemisphere spring, you have a good few hours of soft light to work with.

My camera choice for bird photography is a Canon 5Ds or mirrorless R5 with a 500mm fixed prime or a 100-500mm zoom lens. With recent advances in eye focus tracking, getting good, sharp images is getting easier and easier, but you can still get great results with older cameras and lenses. For compositions where the birds are perched, you can get away with a relatively show shutter speed providing you maintain good stability. For bee-eaters in flight, you will need to aim for as fast a shutter speed as possible. Anything below 1/1250 of a second and you risk the images being a bit soft (but at the same time, this softness can produce beautiful artistic outcomes, particularly if you manage to keep the eyes sharp and in focus).

Having started out with film cameras, I have an old habit of not wanting to push my ISO beyond 3200, but with the latest DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, this is becoming less and less important. ISO settings of 6400 now show remarkably little noise with each new camera release. So use your ISO to help push for a higher shutter speed, particularly in anything less than ideal lighting conditions.

I hope you enjoyed this short article. Please feel free to share any thoughts or questions and if you are ever in Brisbane between August and October and keen to see the Rainbow Bee-eaters, let me know.

Cheers,

Russell