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The first AV consists of just over 1200 images taken in the morning over a period of approximately 65 minutes. The Australian rainbow bee-eater has a unique method of preparing prey by rubbing venomous insects on a branch to remove stingers. They can consume up to 300 insects daily, which minimizes their need for drinking water. In this AV you will see them fly off and catch insects near the roosting branch. Sometimes seen hitting the insect on the branch to remove the sting. Additionally, communal colonies are now common in the area in summer, where sandy soil is perfect nesting material. Sometimes creating tunnels up to 1.6 meters long, and their mating is monogamous, with pairs potentially returning to the same nesting sites year after year. Often, juvenile birds from a previous brood assist the parents in feeding the next lot of chicks. You will see up to 4 birds that were feeding the same nest. While capturing the sequence for this AV, I witnessed the family bomb diving a small snake that ventured into the area. This is a very short AV with limited display time for each image. The second AV has about 180 images from the time-lapse of the birds in flight. I struggled with the number of images from the series and the duration of the AV to hold the viewers' attention. The duration of this AV is around 4 mins and 37 secs. I was back at the nesting site this morning to get some more images, as they are very restful to watch them come and go. Mark

A wonderful project and song selection, everything is true to the songs, we were young and believed, but the years..., I hope your loved ones liked it.

Here are a couple of short AV's of consecutive images of Rainbow Bee-eaters coming in to feed chicks in the nest. The rainbow bee-eater is the only species of bee-eater found in Australia and is monotypic, meaning it has no accepted subspecies. Its closest relative is most likely the olive bee-eater (Merops superciliosus) of southern and eastern Africa, but molecular phylogenetic analysis places the rainbow bee-eater as the closest relative to the European bee-eater. It was first described by John Latham in 1801. The generic name is Ancient Greek merops, which means 'bee-eater' and the specific epithet is Latin ornatus 'ornate, adorned'. The birds do not only eat bees with other insects part of their diet, including dragonflies, march flies, damselflies and other flying insects. The nest's end is large enough to fit two adult birds and the chicks. The birds also rely on adolescent chicks from a previous clutch to feed the new brood. This particular nest had 4 birds providing food for the chicks. The birds generally land on a nearby branch as a lookout perch. I had placed a dead branch on a dead tree as a lookout perch. Often, taking some time to peruse the area and be comfortable, it is safe to enter the nest. They do become comfortable with people/photographers and are always on the lookout for other birds and snakes as they nest in the ground. I had hoped to record the unusual sound of the birds calling, but this generally happens in flight while chasing insects. Unfortunately, there is too much background noise. The first one is a flyover and the second one shows the bird disappearing down the nest in the ground. Regards Mark

Hi Digatral, Thank you for sharing these two beautiful videos and for the information about them. Always great to learn about other bird species. Rosemary

It is so easy for judges to influence what we do. I once made a judge bait sequence with every arty dissolve I could find. I only inflicted on one judge as I could see the palpitations

Hi Mark They certainly have impact although I did find the snap changes a bit repetitive and some of the images appeared to be duplicated. Perhaps some long dissolves would fool the eye into not realising that a dissolve had taken place. The music would have to change and be more soothing ng

Open your project / save it using a new name (this helps to keep your original project) / open the new project / make a right click into the Slide List / choose random order / create an Executable file for PC