European Roller

July 25, 2018. Tash Komur, Kyrgyzstan. Funny name Roller, it attaches to a family of gaudy birds somewhat related to crows. As a child I used to gaze at photos of them and wonder if, or where, I’d ever see one. But time passes and I know I have seen three roller species: Broad-billed, Lilac-breasted and European, the first two last year in Uganda the third one two years ago in Kazakhstan and again most recently in Kyrgyzstan.

I think it was my first Kazakhstan sightings that most excited me, it came as a glimpse from the window of our moving train, trains don’t give second chances, then at every inter-post swoop of the utility wires there perched a large bluish bird. European Roller came to mind and so it was. It was September, late in the summer, and the birds had lost some of their glistening glamour, but still…

Then this year, in mid July, I was back in Central Asia and really not so far from that railway line. This time driving (or rather being driven) through the same type of dry, open farmland. I was looking for birds: eagles, vultures, bee-eaters and rollers in particular, and they were there, European Rollers strategically dotted along utility wires. But getting a photograph was always difficult, the moment we stopped and I picked up the camera they left; I started to despair.

This Cinereous Vulture quartered low over the hayfields and came close, there were European Bee–eaters nesting wherever they could find a sandy cliff-face and a gathering of Barn Swallows lined up along telephone wires. All good birds but still rollers managed to stay out of camera reach.

But a day or so later we stopped to look at a field dotted with bursting cotton bolls and while my companion apparently looked straight through it, I found myself almost eye to eye with this European Roller. We looked at each other for a while, long enough for me to put the camera to work and this is the result.