Swallow Tale

A few of our summer Swallow are still raising their fledglings on a farm near our home so I popped along PM today to see if I could capture a few big gaping mouth shots as the adults approach their nest to feed the young,

Not as easy as it sounds:

First off a farmers barn is always a clutter of machinery and old things that just might come in useful one day.

Secondly the nest are high up in the dark areas of the roof trusses making focus and exposure a nightmare,

Thirdly and perhaps most critical the adults will not feed the young to trigger the fledglings gaping mouth action while you are in the barn.

So the answer is :

Set your tripod up to roof height balanced on top of the machinery,

Work on manual preset focus and use a DTTL flashgun for exposure control.

Use a remote control to fire the camera from outside of the barn so that the adults carry on feeding their young.

Set the camera shutter to continuous high mode to capture images before and after the adult birds approaches the nest,

And the results can be seen below :

It is perhaps hard to believe that in just a few weeks time these mighty mouthed fledglings will be winging their way south across Africa !!