{"id":86505,"date":"2020-06-20T05:02:44","date_gmt":"2020-06-20T11:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=86505"},"modified":"2020-06-20T05:02:44","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T11:02:44","slug":"rough-winged-swallow-going-from-a-good-day-to-a-bad-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/20\/rough-winged-swallow-going-from-a-good-day-to-a-bad-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Rough-winged Swallow Going From A Good Day To A Bad Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Northern Rough-winged Swallows are fairly common throughout their breeding range but they’re easily missed by birders, in part because they’re largely solitary rather than colonial. Of all North American swallows far fewer of of this species are noticed and counted during bird counts and I seldom see them myself. But for the last couple of mornings a single Rough-winged Swallow has been hanging around a mountain stream I frequent, along with quite a few Barn Swallows.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the Barn Swallows this poor little guy had a rough morning yesterday.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

His morning started out pretty well. He lazed on this perch overhanging the stream for quite a\u00a0 while, preening and seeming to do a lot of relaxing and warming up in the sun soon after sunrise. It was an unusually cold morning in the 30’s so few of the other swallows had yet begun to hunt insects on the wing over the slow flowing stream so they mostly left ‘him’ in peace.<\/p>\n

At first there were few subjects near the stream for me to photograph so it became my intention to catch him in flight if he ever took off. But he was content where he was so it was a long wait.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, canvas added for composition, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

But I was paying attention when he finally launched so I was lucky enough to get this shot of him in flight with light in his eye and a wing position that I like. For this version of the photo I had to add canvas to get an acceptable composition.<\/p>\n

But in the 28 minutes between this shot and the next two his situation became much more intense. It was warming up quickly so insects began to fly over the stream and Barn Swallows began to pursue them.<\/p>\n

In the process they mercilessly harassed and even attacked the Rough-winged Swallow no matter where he perched.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

By now our hero had moved to a different perch that some readers may recognize as the same one used by a male Belted Kingfisher in a photo I posted several days ago<\/a><\/span><\/span>. While Barn Swallows were snagging insects over the water they would take every opportunity to harass the rough-winged whenever they came close.<\/p>\n

This was the beginning of his reaction to one of the incoming Barn Swallow attacks.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

But this time instead of simply taking the aggression while perched he responded aggressively himself by launching toward his incoming attacker and I was able to get this shot that I like very much. His aggressive posture in flight is something I’ve never been able to capture in a swallow in the past and I love the background. I had no idea I’d captured anything like this shot until I got home and looked at my images on my computer.<\/p>\n

Which is one reason I never chimp (delete) images in the field. Culling can always wait.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: If you’re curious about how Rough-winged Swallows got such an unusual name here’s the real poop from Cornell’s Birds of the World:<\/em><\/p>\n