Christmas Bells

Christmas Bells
Christmas Bells - Blandfordia nobilis

Monday, January 26, 2009

Fork-tailed Swifts have "landed"

The images of the Fork-tailed Swifts which I published here last week have been accepted for permanent publication by the Canberra Ornithologists Group in their excellent bird Photo Gallery.
http://photogallery.canberrabirds.org.au/Species%20HTML/fork-tailed_swift.html

Hence my facetious comment on these Swifts having "landed" - as they are said to seldom land in Australia. Even though it seems improbably that they can fly for months on end, without landing, sightings of Swifts landing in trees or on rock ledges in Australia are extremely rare. They do breed on cliffs, in Asia.

I was particularly pleased that the COG webmaster has chosen this particularly elegant looking image as the "front page" view for the species. Incidentally, the Fork-tailed Swift is noted as being a "rare summer migrant to the ACT". Pretty rare in Robertson too, from my records.
I did not publish this nice clear image (above) the other day, for when I took this image, there was a spot on the camera sensor, and it made it look like the bird had a bent beak. It took me a while to realise what was wrong, and I was able to clean up the image (without altering the image of the bird itself). It is a nice image, as it shows the bird rolling over, at about 60 degrees from the vertical, and the tail fork is just visible, but the white rump and the neatly curved wings are shown very nicely indeed.
The curved wings typify the bird's wing adjustment for full speed.
This last image, which have not published before, shows the Swift as the ultimate speed machine, with wings fully swept back.

4 comments:

mick said...

Hi Denis, congratulations on having the Swift photos published. Nice to have your work recognized.

Denis Wilson said...

Thanks, Mick
I was tickled pink.
Denis

Duncan said...

Well done Denis, no mean feat getting pictures of these pocket rockets.

Denis Wilson said...

Hi Duncan
"Pocket rockets" indeed!
I worked out that I took something like 85 images in 15 minutes, while they were around. Thanks heavens for Digital, eh?
6 worthwhile images were worth it. It was great fun, actually - a bit like going fishing - you sit there all day, or all year, then suddenly the fish start biting. In this case Swifts in a feeding frenzy over my house. And my images didn't hurt the birds one bit!
I'm sure you have similar experiences with your Damsels and Dragons.
Cheers
Denis