Travelling through southern Africa, pretty much any time of year, will provide the opportunity to see a great variety of birds. Today I chose to focus on ones with feathers in shades of blue. I hope you enjoy the variety of images today, and wishing you a wonderful weekend!
2018-06-10: Birds Projects – Sparrows and Swallows
It has been a challenging week for photographing the birds, with dull, cold, rainy days, and flat, lifeless skies. But, regardless of the weather, the show must go on, and if I were on holiday I wouldn’t give up on taking pictures just because the weather wasn’t perfect.
I took a trip early in the week to a nearby farm where there are nest boxes for swallows and bluebirds. While I saw a couple of brief glimpses of the bluebirds, I didn’t capture any images, so I will have to go back and try again for those. I did get some good images of the swallows and bluebirds in the same area a couple of years ago, you can find that old post here.
It looks like the sun may make a brief appearance today, so it’s time to sign off and get outside and get shooting. I hope you enjoy this week’s images, I am hoping to have some hummingbird images to share next week.
To find out more about the Clay-Coloured Sparrow (and here the insect buzz call), check out the link below.
All About Birds – Clay Coloured Sparrow
Lesser Striped Swallows
I had a wonderful time watching the lesser striped swallows while staying at the Zimanga volunteer house. There really wasn’t a time at home when they weren’t keeping us company, as they had established two nests inside the house, and one on the front porch where we typically had our meals.
I got used to them calling and chattering from the window when I checked my email (I wish I could find a link to post of their calls; they make such wonderful sounds) or swooping above my head while I had lunch or dinner outside. My vantage point was usually not great to take photos of the swallows (lots of shadows), but spending the time watching them build their nests and interacting with each other was such a treat.
Since I don’t have a lot of variety in my swallow photos, I decided to take my favourites, and edit each of them in different ways. Adding things like a vintage film effect isn’t part of my normal editing process; this has been a fun post to get ready.