Portraits of Swallows

[mstrozewski]

5/5/14 I went to Bear River Bird Refuge and Photographed the birds. I didn't realize till I got home and checked images that I had photographed 4 types of Swallows. However, the images of the Cliff Swallows didn't turn out so Here's 3 that did.

I find it amazing that they all co-exist together and in such large flocks. I also think after watching them, they're on my list of favorite birds

Barn Swallow



Bank Swallow



Tree Swallow

[Paniaa]

Mavourneen

Isn't that a beautiful name. How did you get an Irish first name and Polish surname? Hope it's OK to ask. The birds are well captured, every one with sparkles in their eyes. Really hard to capture details in white feathers, but the iridescence you did get. Wonderful.

[Dave Humphries]

Nicely captured and processed Mavourneen,

Knowing how fast these things fly, and how they are "on the wing" what seems like 95% of the time, you have done well to capture these.

My only comments relating to these are that with the Tree Swallow, I would have cropped to put more empty space on (our) right of the subject, since that's where s/he's looking (at odds with body angle, I know). I think I would also have cloned out the attention diverting little midge on the bar camera left.


I am very familiar with the concept of only discovering what I have been taking pictures of when sat in front of computer

Well done,

[Shadowman]

Nice series.

[IzzieK]

Nice shots, Mavourneen...I was about to ask you how you keep tabs of the names of birds you just shot...Dave answered part of it. Do you carry a notepad or input it in your camera? and put say, IMK23456 shot = Barn Swallow. How do you do you categorized and name them unless you have shot a lot of them and can recognize the difference between a barn swallow from another breed. If you are not new to birding, how do you remember them later on? I am sorry for askng too many questions but I am really interested to know...

[Suzan J]

These are very nice Mavourneen. I particularly like the barn swallow as the colours really pop against the background.

[Brownbear]

Absolutely beautiful! Stunning!

[mstrozewski]

Thank my mother and father for the name

[mstrozewski]

Izzie,

I have the "Field Guide to North American Birds" and I also use (allaboutbirds.org) and National Geographic's Backyard bird identifier. The swallows each have unique color patterns that makes it easy to identify and remember who they are. I'm not new to birding per-say, but there are some birds it's hard to identify. These ones were easy. I'm a visual person by nature so once I know what it is then I remember when in the field. But, on my computer I will categorize the images into "year" "location" and then by "landscape or wildlife" and from there the types. Then it makes it easy to find what I'm looking for when it comes to reference images. I hope this answered your question?

[mstrozewski]

Dave,

Due to the distance that I photographed the Tree Swallow at there isn't much room on the right. But I did move the crop to the far right and did clone out the midge. (Those things are a pain anyway, but even in pictures I think the little things add to habitat). Here's also a Barn Swallow flapping it's wings on a marsh weed. (I'm not very good at capturing birds in flight and I do consider this a flight because it hovered over the weed before landing on it)

[bnnrcn]

I like the shots very much