Summer swallows

[khiemtran]

Every night, after dinner, we can sit outside and get a free aerobatics display...



It's bird versus insect and the swallows are hunting in pairs. Can you feel the speed?





Ignoring the battle, a cockatoo flaps off slowly overhead.



Not the best photos (the swallows especially are hard to capture), but I might get a few good ones before summer is out.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Having tried to capture birds in flight, and swifts, at that (which are very like swallows), I think they're jolly good photos. I *can* feel the speed, and the joy. Swallows--the way they swoop and curve and dash. Just wonderful.

(the nighthawk in this icon is *not* my photo)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

The trick is that these shots are all manually focussed; the swallows are just too fast for my autofocus to keep up with. So, it's quite a fun to try to catch them midflight, in the same way it would have been a good "sport" say fifty years to try to hit them with a gentlemanly shotgun.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

(I like especially your second-to-last one, where you can see the colors of his feathers--and the deep V of his tail!)

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

I noticed the swallows were out in force here, too. Can't wait until I start seeing the European Bee-eaters on their migration through here.

ETA: to change icon and add that the other day, we ate at a restaurant on the Nile, and the swallows, swooping and singing, really reminded me of our home in Menetreol-sous-Sancerre, where we lived when Sprout was a baby. Good memories.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

They certainly look like they're having fun. Dinner on the Nile, with the swallows swooping, sounds like a wonderful memory too.