Thanks all 
Appreciate the comments.
nc_killie wrote in post #18069689
Excellent series - I guess you would recommend the hides?
TFS
Absolutely. I'm definitely returning to his Hungary hides (probably Costa Rican ones too) and am trying to sort out my schedule to do his new Africa hides as well which he's just running the 1st trip there at the moment. 1 week is not enough to do "everything" in Hungary and things change day-by-day and year-on-year as with anything related to wildlife after all. You can shoot otters at night for example if you get your flash guns, and I think he had about 5 or 6 breeding pairs of rollers this year. I think he had 16 hides running in total when I was there.
To me they are by a very long stretch the best hides for birds I've been to. Some of them are fantastic feats of engineering on their own. One of the hides (which he calls The Theatre) you actually reach via an underwater tunnel and they're fully equipped from custom mounts down to power and wifi (during the winter season he stays there for up to a week). Other hides are a bit more basic but the photo opportunities are just as good. The drinking station hides were probably my favourite overall because you see such a variety of birds, including birds of prey (got sparrowhawks and common buzzards, but goshawks also frequent them). Some of them even have mirrors you can adjust to get some nice back lighting, as I did with the chaffinch and woodpecker.
He's got a great team and other than being all round very nice people managing the place and their attention to detail is second to none.
The glass fronted hides do mean you lose some light (shot most of my stuff at 1600 ISO) and you can lose some IQ if you're shooting at too big an angle to the glass, but that's very rarely the case. I'm hoping I'll be able to acquire a 300 2.8 next time I go there as that would absolutely be the perfect lens there.
