As mentioned in my last post on Hamurana Springs, we were lucky to find Welcome Swallows feeding fledglings which provided a photographic subject worthy of some repeated visits over a few days of the Christmas break. At first the fledglings were grouped together on a twig and the adults would fly in and feed them on the perch. Photographing this was comparatively easy as by keeping the youngsters in the frame they gave a clear indication of an approaching adult with their gaze direction and begging behaviour. It was simply a matter of awaiting an adult’s arrival and then blazing 10 frames a second until it left.The biggest challenge was trying to get a clear view through the twigs and branches and lining up a decent background. Over a few days this changed to the point where the young birds were being tempted off their perch by the adults and many of the food transfers were happening in midair and were impossible to photograph.  It was great fun and I have a lot of decent images, some of which I have shared here.

Welcome Swallows are the only swallow we have in New Zealand and are self introduced from Australia. They were rare vagrants prior to the late 1950s but bred in Northland in 1958 and spread rapidly. They can raise 3 broods over the Spring/Summer breeding season and lay clutches of 3-5 eggs which hatch after 15 days with the young birds fledging at 18 days. For more info see New Zealand Birds online which features one of my photos as the master image for the species.

All photos with Nikon D500, Nikon 300mm f4 VR PF lens + TC 1.4 x teleconverter.