A barn swallow preens one of his long wing feathers by dragging it through his bill. The action was so fast that I didn’t realize he had a single feather pulled out until I got home and saw the picture. While he cleaned his wings, there was one part that didn’t get cleaned (and you can see it in the picture): there’s a bit of dried mud on the beak itself.
This is the female barn swallow that was paired with the male from the earlier pictures.
Despite the pairing, she rebuffed his two attempts at mating (or at least having a bit of fun). Females tend to have lighter coloring in the chest than the males, which was pretty obvious in these two.
I took this picture with my big telephoto lens while standing on a little wooden bridge on the Kiwa Trail at Ridgefield. Before I bought the lens a couple of years ago, I debated long and hard on whether it was a worthwhile purchase.
When I get my first time machine, I’m going to pay a visit to that past self and slap him around a little bit for waiting so long to buy the lens, it’s become a real favorite of mine.
A male barn swallow stretches out its wings while perched on a cattail. All swallows have long, swept wings, but here you can see a feature unique to barn swallows: the long thin tail feathers that stick out even past the long wings.
I went to Ridgefield again this past weekend (try to contain your surprise), heading up to be there when the gates opened at 6am, a little too far past sunrise for my liking. I had hoped to photograph blackbirds again and did get a few of a singing male red-wing in the beautiful light, but in general the birds weren’t too active so I headed further into the refuge.
The Kiwa Trail is open this time of year and even though I rarely get any good pictures on it, I wanted to see if the turtles or frogs were out and about. They weren’t, but near the end of the trail I met a pair of barn swallows that were building a nest under one of the wooden footbridges. They were remarkably tolerant of my presence so I spent the next hour watching them until the beautiful light was gone.
This is the male, they tend to have darker chests than the females, watch this space for more of both of them as I got a handful of pictures that I really like. Compare this picture in the early sunlight to a similar picture on an overcast day in a different part of the refuge. I like both pictures, and despite what it might seem barn swallows really don’t spend a lot of time with their mouths open.
On a day I spent watching birds sing, from yellow-headed and red-winged blackbirds to song sparrows and marsh wrens, this little barn swallow was the only one not singing. It may look like it with its mouth agape, but it had been swarming over the lake hunting insects with the rest of the barn and tree swallows.
It landed on the cattail for just a moment while I happened to be driving by. It opened its mouth wide a couple of times, preened a few feathers, and then took to the skies once more.