Barn owls
Summer 2026
I have long been fascinated by owls, especially the very beautiful barn owl.
The more I have read about them, the more fascinating they have become.
While some cultures see the barn owl as ‘the ghost bird’ and harbinger of death, I prefer the idea of them as wise, enigmatic creatures. I love their curiosity - many of my most memorable encounters have been when I have been standing across a large meadow watching a distant owl, when the owl decides to come over and check me out. It is a complete thrill to have one of these birds choose to come close.
Most years I start looking for barn owls early, long before they start to think about the breeding season ahead. This year though I have only encountered a pair late in their breeding cycle - as it turned out, a few days before their young fledged.
Barn owls have provided plenty of challenge to photograph. First, finding them; then overcoming the technical challenges of photographing in the low light of an evening, or an early dawn.
It really tests the limits of the kit - you need a long telephoto lens to give the owls space to fly and hunt undisturbed, and you need to have bright lenses to grab every little bit of light available, and if possible a high-resolution camera so you can crop in to get the owls to a reasonable size in the final frame. It has taken me a lot of failed attempts to get the unusual settings required.
The technical challenge makes getting the shots all the more special.
The colony
The bee-eaters have chosen as home a pair of sand banks in an area just away from the Tagus River. Here they have soft sand to tunnel in, surrounded by oak trees and scrubland covered in wild flowers. Food is clearly plentiful, and their trips to find insects on the wing are short. They never seem to fly far, and the air is filled with their constant calls.
The migration
European bee-eaters are summer visitors to Europe, heading off once the breeding season’s done to spend winter in sub-Saharan Africa. Once they’re in Africa, they don’t just settle in one spot — they move around following wherever the insects are.
It is a hazardous journey, driven by the availability of insects. The wetlands and grasslands they rely on for rest stops on the way are shrinking because of farming, building, and drought. Climate change is messing with rainfall patterns too, which throws off insect numbers right when the birds need fuel the most, while pesticides can wipe out the insects they depend on.
And still they thrive. I saw my first European bee-eaters of this year in the Waterberg district of South Africa (where I took this photo), I hope to see them again later in the year in Namibia or Botswana. It will be a fitting way to round off my summer spent with this colony.
Fledging
I had envisaged shots of the parents feeding the recently fledged chicks for their first few days out of the nest holes.
What I saw instead was the parents and other adult birds chasing the young fledglings away from the nest holes. Each time a fledgling would try and go back to their nest they were chased off by multiple adult birds. The adults clearly don’t want the young returning to the nest, but want them away to get ready for the next stage… migration back to sub-Saharan Africa.
Hopefully I will encounter some European bee-eaters there on my next trip to Southern Africa, and I will whimsically wonder if any I see there are from this Portuguese nesting colony that has been so rewarding tho visit across the European summer.
Constant motion, constant sound
What photography can’t portray is the constant sound around the nest site - the bee-eaters are constantly chirping. They are really argumentative with each other, but also get very excited when they see their mate coming. As the summer goes on the constant motion increases - at times the parent birds were visiting the young with food every 25 to 30 seconds. It is this movement and sound that makes every visit to the colony such a pleasure.
European bee-eater montage
