{"id":7318,"date":"2017-01-15T13:36:15","date_gmt":"2017-01-15T00:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/?p=7318"},"modified":"2017-01-15T16:59:59","modified_gmt":"2017-01-15T03:59:59","slug":"welcome-swallows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/7318","title":{"rendered":"Welcome Swallows"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Welcome Swallow bringing an insect to 2 fledglings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As mentioned in my last post on Hamurana Springs<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
2 Welcome Swallow fledglings awaiting an adult with food<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/a> which features one of my photos as the master image for the species.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
Adult Welcome Swallow transferring food to a perched fledgling. Note the nictitating membrane protecting the adult’s eye.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Adult Welcome Swallow flying past fledglings with prey tempting them to fly and take the food in flight.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All photos with Nikon D500, Nikon 300mm f4 VR PF lens + TC 1.4 x teleconverter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,3,29],"tags":[26,25,144,218,190],"class_list":["post-7318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-birds","category-new-zealand","tag-bird-photography","tag-birds","tag-new-zealand","tag-nikon-d500","tag-photography","entry","has-media"],"yoast_head":"\nWelcome Swallows - WildLight Photography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/7318\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Welcome Swallows - WildLight Photography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"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. 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They always remind me of African Sacred Ibis (Threskiornis aethiopicus), which having grown up with Hadeda Ibis in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Australia"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/category\/australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"Australian White Ibis coming in to land","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/AustralianWhiteIbis_DSC3303-web.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/AustralianWhiteIbis_DSC3303-web.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/AustralianWhiteIbis_DSC3303-web.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/AustralianWhiteIbis_DSC3303-web.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10683,"url":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/10683","url_meta":{"origin":7318,"position":5},"title":"Photographing Swallows in Flight","author":"tony","date":"October 20, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"A Welcome Swallow jets past at Matata Lagoon For photographers obsessed with photographing birds, flight shots have their own special challenges depending on the bird species. Photographing swallows in flight is right up there with Fantails in level of difficulty as they are small, move fast and move erratically. They\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "birds"","block_context":{"text":"birds","link":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/archives\/category\/birds"},"img":{"alt_text":"A Welcome Swallow jets past at Matata Lagoon","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/WelcomeSwallow-D85_3930-web.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/WelcomeSwallow-D85_3930-web.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/WelcomeSwallow-D85_3930-web.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/WelcomeSwallow-D85_3930-web.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonywhitehead.com\/wildlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}