Swallows Over the River

After a visit to a shop in Renton, I stopped by the airport to see what was going on.  I was taking a walk along the trail alongside the Cedar River that runs parallel to the runway.  As I headed back to the car, I heard a noisy bird making its presence felt.  Looking up at a power line across the water, there was an osprey a short distance away.  I didn’t have anything other than my phone with me so went back to the car to grab a long lens and to see if it would wait around for me.

Sadly, it didn’t appreciate the situation and had gone by the time I returned.  However, the river was not empty.  Tons of swallows were swooping along its length feasting on the bugs above the water.  Looking along the river towards the bridge from the Boeing ramp, you could see loads of them at work.  Getting photos of swallows is not easy.  They move very fast and do not hold course for long so getting a track on them with a long lens and keeping it is tough.  The 500mm is a challenge for this but it is what I had.

There were tons of failures but you don’t get to see these.  I was surprised how often I managed to track one and that the camera did a really great job of getting a focus.  There was a little predictability of the flight paths which did help but, even so, I was rather pleased with the results.  Also, given that these are still heavily cropped, to get this sharp was quite a result.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *