Swift (Apus apus)
This is a Swift (Apus apus) which was part of a big group of Swifts feeding on insects on Fenns Moss NNR (National Nature Reserve).
I took these photo earlier in the year and put some on Flickr. However, I had so many of these images to go through that I thought I was able to sort some of the better ones out for more careful processing.
Initially when I tried to photograph them I was having no success at all. For 40 minutes I tried, and most of the hundreds of frames I shot didn't even have a Swift in them or it was going out of frame. They were just too fast when they flew in closer, and you literally had only a fraction of a second to frame them. They were usually out of frame before I had time to press the shutter button. Then I found if I picked up the bird further away and got the AF locked on it, that eventually it would wheel back in close, which made keeping it in the frame and tracking it much easier.
There was quite a cold breeze, but it was sunny. A line of trees along the old rail way line was acting as a wind break, and big clouds of flies were in the sheltered area from the wind behind the trees, but which caught the sun. Here several hundred Swifts had gathered to hunt these flies.
Swift (Apus apus)
This is a Swift (Apus apus) which was part of a big group of Swifts feeding on insects on Fenns Moss NNR (National Nature Reserve).
I took these photo earlier in the year and put some on Flickr. However, I had so many of these images to go through that I thought I was able to sort some of the better ones out for more careful processing.
Initially when I tried to photograph them I was having no success at all. For 40 minutes I tried, and most of the hundreds of frames I shot didn't even have a Swift in them or it was going out of frame. They were just too fast when they flew in closer, and you literally had only a fraction of a second to frame them. They were usually out of frame before I had time to press the shutter button. Then I found if I picked up the bird further away and got the AF locked on it, that eventually it would wheel back in close, which made keeping it in the frame and tracking it much easier.
There was quite a cold breeze, but it was sunny. A line of trees along the old rail way line was acting as a wind break, and big clouds of flies were in the sheltered area from the wind behind the trees, but which caught the sun. Here several hundred Swifts had gathered to hunt these flies.