Swift feeding
Yesterday morning our local Swifts were flying over the garden so I went out with my camera for some target practice. This wasn't my best photo of the session, but a Swift feeding is something I've been trying to photograph for ages. They fly around catching flying insects which they store in their crop to take back to the nest. They can catch up to a thousand insects before returning to feed the chicks. David Lack who studied Swifts nesting in a tower at Oxford University counted 312 different species of insect and spider in these bug balls, and found that typically they contain 3-500 insects. Because winged insect food is so variable and unpredictable the youngsters can go into a kind of torpor, dropping their body temperature and arresting their development, then resuming to normal development when the insects start to reappear. They probably hunt at about 25 mph but even at this speed they can differentiate between insects. One swift was found to have caught several stingless drone honeybees but neatly avoided all of the stinging females. It is thought that each Swift may catch 10,000 insects in a day, which makes it surprising that this is the first time I have managed to photograph one feeding.
Swift feeding
Yesterday morning our local Swifts were flying over the garden so I went out with my camera for some target practice. This wasn't my best photo of the session, but a Swift feeding is something I've been trying to photograph for ages. They fly around catching flying insects which they store in their crop to take back to the nest. They can catch up to a thousand insects before returning to feed the chicks. David Lack who studied Swifts nesting in a tower at Oxford University counted 312 different species of insect and spider in these bug balls, and found that typically they contain 3-500 insects. Because winged insect food is so variable and unpredictable the youngsters can go into a kind of torpor, dropping their body temperature and arresting their development, then resuming to normal development when the insects start to reappear. They probably hunt at about 25 mph but even at this speed they can differentiate between insects. One swift was found to have caught several stingless drone honeybees but neatly avoided all of the stinging females. It is thought that each Swift may catch 10,000 insects in a day, which makes it surprising that this is the first time I have managed to photograph one feeding.