{"id":1935,"date":"2011-05-17T23:05:55","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T22:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1935"},"modified":"2013-11-09T15:21:57","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T15:21:57","slug":"house-martins-and-other-birds-at-the-pond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/house-martins-and-other-birds-at-the-pond\/","title":{"rendered":"House Martins and other birds at the pond"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Water attracts wildlife, and among the regular sights at the moment are the fast-flying swifts, swallows and house martins. They're all attracted by the abundant insect life, and all three species create a wonderful aerobatic display as they feed on the wing. Photographing them is something of a challenge. With rapid and unpredictable changes in direction, keeping them in focus (and in frame) is a complicated compromise between distance (more frame) and detail (when they're close they fly out of shot almost before you see them). All of which means that a lot of shots get thrown away, but every now and then the different elements come together and something useful emerges.<\/p>\n

One of my big 'want' shots is a swallow skimming the water. I've yet to manage one I really like. This one was too distant, and the swallow is facing the wrong way!
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The swifts are almost as tricky but they tend to circle more persistently which at least means you get lots of 'goes' at capturing them in the camera.
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The best opportunities though come when the subject decides to do you a favour and come down on to dry (or at least, muddy) land. Swallows do this, and so too do the house martins.
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Even better, what comes down also goes up, and photographing a take-off is child's play (relatively speaking).
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In between tying myself in knots with those shots, I did take a few of the other inhabitants. First a young pied wagtail.
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Next, a juvenile moorhen (they grow up so quickly).
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The goslings currently come in two sizes (and colour schemes). First some recent arrivals.
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After a few weeks, the gold turns to grey (they are greylags, after all), and they start to lose their hair (surely life by the pond isn't that stressful!).
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As for the ducklings, they're moulting too and some of them are just discovering their wings. They are not yet ready to fly, but there's no reason not to enjoy a good old stretch.
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\"Nature<\/a><\/span>
Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[980],"tags":[1176,340,562,1172,120,1165,1186],"class_list":["post-1935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-2","tag-duckling","tag-gosling","tag-house-martin","tag-moorhen","tag-pied-wagtail","tag-swallow","tag-swift","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}