photoblogging: tree swallows

At last, a day without responsibilities—or at least none that couldn't be shirked. I drove down to Wagon Train Lake near Hickman, where a neighbor told me the black crappie were biting. Last night's cold front evidently put an end to that, but a confiding flock of tree swallows tempted me to stay and shoot some pictures.

My camera isn't really a good choice for bird photography—too slow, not enough zoom—and swallows in flight are a challenge under the best of circumstances. Nevertheless, I thought I had figured out a technique that would allow me to bring home a few crisply-focused close-ups of birds on the wing. Several chilly hours and two sets of batteries later...well, I guess I was wrong.

So let's just pretend that the out-of-focus shots were done that way on purpose, an artistic rendering to convey a sense of the birds' speed and the applicability of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to Tachycineta bicolor.