View allAll Photos Tagged Swift,
The light was very low so I tried panning with the Swifts at Startops today. While the light was terrible, the birds were stunning. The reservoir was packed solid with swift and hirundine at all heights. It is amazing when they wiz past you and you can feel the air they move. The light made this one look very brown.
Last week I was able to band three young Swifts in a nestbox. For me it was the fist time to handhold a nearly fledging Swift. Although it's fully grown it takes at least two weeks before they leave the nestbox for the first time as they first have to loose weight and built confidence to make the jump (of 6 meters...)
D200 Tamron 90mm macro, full frame
During Swift Response 2023 exercise I was able to attend some practices at Bardenas Reales shooting range in Spain by USAF A10s. No real fire (not even BRRRRRRRT, because of the ammunition) but great flying demos, some of them for the media. A great day!
Each year (so far) the swifts return to nest in our roof although, with varying success. This year is a good one - heaven alone knows how - and regular flights to the nest nights are a sure sign they will soon be on their way back to Africa. We'll miss them.
New to Kowloon Motor Bus as their 3BL59, registered DD3601, MIL5574 was one of 12 similar vehicles imported into the UK during 2001/2 by Brightbus. Its entire UK career has been spent as a school bus. Note the rudimentary demist unit - a dash mounted heater box with pipes either side directed at the windscreens.
Mt Baker Wilderness, Washington
Mid August in the North Cascades: the upper parking lot had been cleared of enough snow to reveal the restrooms but it was like parking in a giant snowbowl. Although quite a few trails were obliterated by the snowpack, the trail to Lake Ann lost enough elevation and received enough direct sun to be open. At the bottom of the switchbacks, spring greenery filled the valley. Erratics littered the glacial meadow hosting Swift Creek, and Mt Baker dominated the skyline, out where the valley dropped off.
This is a two picture HDR rendering in Photomatix. The camera couldn't hold the glare of the peak and the landscape; I also tried a split ND, but blending two exposures made for a better transition.
1973 AEC Swift 6 Litre diesel Great Yarmouth Transport operated a number of AEC Swifts with locally built ECW bodies,
The ECW factory in Lowestoft built only 22 bodies on the rear-engined Swift chassis, all of them dual-door 11m vehicles for the two municipal undertakings on its doorstep. Ten went to Lowestoft Corporation, while 85 was one of 12 for Great Yarmouth Transport
with WEX 685M having been a regular rally attendee for many years. Now in the care of the The Eastern Counties Bus Preservation Group,
Thousands of vaux swifts fly around this chimney for about an hour and then all dive in and only happens for about 4 weeks a year!!! Hundreds of people were watching!! Sometimes they made super psychedelic patterns in the sky! Amazing to see! Thousands of birds flying in synchronicity??????!!!!!!!!!!!!! A person about 8 feet away got pooped on........ ;D
Wiki: During fall migration one of the highlights for birders is the large groups of Vaux’s swifts that communally roost in chimneys along their way. This fantastic show that the birds put on may consist of a few birds or many thousands. Agate Hall at the University of Oregon and Chapman School in Portland are two of the largest known sites in the world housing thousands of swifts and drawing many onlookers. Vaux’s swifts are linked with old growth forest and need large hollow snags for nesting. The species is likely declining and migration is a great time to survey the population.
It takes a lot of work with Setwings to get them to pose like this. They can be very skittish till they're used to you. And you have to have just-the-right-light. My Georgia yard after a two-day photo session ;-)
A common swift (Apus apus) that I photographed by some nesting boxes one month ago.
It was really cool to have them flying right above my head in a really high speed. Their maximum horizontal flying speed is 111.6 km/h (69.3 mph).
Except when nesting, swifts spend their lives in the air, living on the insects caught in flight. They drink, feed, and often mate and sleep on the wing. Some individuals go 10 months without landing
It's the first time I've managed to get some okay photos of them, but I have to try some more next year to get even better ones.
Now most of them are on their way back to Equatorial and Sub-Equatorial Africa for the winter.
Swifts form pairs that may couple for years, and often return to the same nesting site and partner year after year, repairing degradation suffered in their 40-week migratory absence.
Their summer breeding range runs from Portugal and Ireland in the West across to China and Siberia in the East. They breed as far south as Northern Africa (in Morocco and Algeria), with a presence in the Middle East in Israel, Lebanon and Syria, the Near East across Turkey, and the whole of Europe and most of sub-Arctic Russia.
(TÃ¥rnseiler in Norwegian)
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One of many Swifts from today at Stodmarsh in between the rain showers. The fastest birds in level flight, with an impressive top speed of 69mph
[Apus apus]
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I know, i am obsessed with swifts and swallows LOL LOL.But with there being fewer of them around this year and the crap weather, opportunities have been few and far between.
On another note,is my camera knackered ?.On 1 or 2 of todays pics when looked at on the camera monitor half the pic was ok and the other half was flashing black.Like it was an old negative ?, If i zoomed in a little the flashing black stopped,and the pics have downloaded to my computer ok.This has never happened before today,any ideas anyone ?.Thanks.
Callum Brae, Canberra.
Swift Parrots breed in Tasmania, but fly to the mainland to feed outside the breeding season. Sadly they are becoming endangered through predation by Sugar Gliders in Tasmania.
Joining the ranks of industrial equipment rusting into oblivion on CCTs property, this old crane frames BUGX 2000 as the the crew swiftly moves out of the shops to begin a perilous day of switching
nailed it but bloody hard ,1 out of 50 is not a bad average i suppose ,no wonder they call them swifts
I'm riding the trailing SD40-2 on train 909. A few minutes earlier we had heard train 910 with 772 on the point clear at Swift. The radio crackled "switches lined and locked main to main" and we are rolling right along at the authorized 40mph as I lean out for a shot of our meet. Fun times back in the early 80's