Living Luangwa - Patrick Bentley's Blog » Birds

Aerial images

Patrick Bentley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:08:34 +0000

Despite the bad weather John and I had a wonderful week getting up into the air in his microlight whenever we could. A few shots..

Elephant family

Buffalo mud bath

Flying with Bateleur eagles is always exhilarating – they are extremely fast and almost impossible to photograph so I’m quite pleased with the image below.

Bateleur eagle

Apart from the photography we have been tracking lions using the radio collars fitted by the Luangwa Valley Carnivore Monitoring Program. We found a group of four males and a female feeding on a buffalo in the Nsefu sector. It seems the collared lions in the Lion Camp area have moved inland away from the river to avoid the flooding as there was no sign of them. We have also done a few flights further north looking for poachers – John quite often finds poacher’s camps and meat-drying racks in the rains but thankfully there is no sign of them this year.

Male Lion following a game trail

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Exhibition closes

Patrick Bentley — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:22:11 +0000

It has been a very busy month for me but my exhibition has now come to an end and things are quietening down just in time for Christmas. The exhibition was a great success – it was titled ‘Living Luangwa’ and featured 50 of my favourite images from my last 4 years work in the Luangwa valley. Here are a few of the most popular photographs although seeing them at web size doesn’t do them justice – printed large, framed and lit well makes all the difference..

Hollywood

Clash of the Titans

Kaingo

Broken Mopane

Kakuli

Milky way

Making waves

Geronimo!

Wet feet

Lashes

Skimming

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Carmine bee-eater in flight

Patrick Bentley — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:17:56 +0000

I managed to get a few hours of editing in today. I took this photo a couple days before I left the valley from one of my good friend Derek Shenton’s fabulous photographic hides. This one is built specifically for photographing carmine bee-eaters and is in a boat tied up to a tree in the river. Check it out here.

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Carmine bee-eaters

Patrick Bentley — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:10:09 +0000

The last couple months have been very busy and I haven’t had a chance to edit many images – which unfortunately means that the blog has been a little quiet recently. Things are starting to calm down a little now as the safari season comes to an end and so I will be posting more often in the coming weeks.

The Carmine bee-eaters have been active as usual this year, frantically digging their nests in the banks of the Luangwa river so that they can nest, raise their chicks and be gone again before the river fills with the coming rains. A couple shots..

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Lilac breasted roller

Patrick Bentley — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:02:30 +0000

otherwise known as ‘another bloody roller’ – a very common bird here in the valley but also very beautiful.

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New bird for the Luangwa valley

Patrick Bentley — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:16:41 +0000

Not a terribly exciting photo but it is quite an exciting find. This bird is a Spur-winged Lapwing (Plover) and it hasn’t been recorded here in the Luangwa Valley before. When I first saw it I thought it was the common Blacksmith Lapwing but on closer inspection it was quite obviously different. It has been added to the official list of National Park birds bringing the total number of species that occur here to 460.

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White-headed lapwing

Patrick Bentley — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:34:33 +0000

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Nocturnal birds

Patrick Bentley — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:12:57 +0000

A couple shots of nocturnal birds from a recent night drive. The first is a Verreaux’s Eagle-owl and the second a Water Thick-knee (Dikkop).

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Saddle-billed stork

Patrick Bentley — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:10:14 +0000

This impressive looking bird is a female Saddle-billed stork. The sexes are nearly identical except that the female has a yellow eye whereas the male has a black eye. The male is also larger than the female. It is a huge bird with a wingspan of nearly 9 feet.

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Litle Bee-eater

Patrick Bentley — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:23:04 +0000

The mornings are quite cold at this time of year which makes it easier to approach birds fairly closely as they sit sunning themselves. This is an extreme close-up of one of my favourite birds, the little bee-eater. Check out the blue eyeshadow – very eighties!