You remember my posts a few weeks back regarding the Barn Swallows nesting down inside an old disused well (see HERE). As normal with Barn Swallows (sometimes they go for a 3rd!), they are now raising a 2nd brood, this time 5 chicks are in the nest.
This morning was amazing clear skies, so I headed to the old pump house and managed to eventually get the tripod and 500mm lens into position, it was a bit tight!
If battling dust and mosquitos the size of airplanes wasn’t hard enough this crazy June weather (same thing happened last year!) brought in total cloud cover. Daylight in the well is almost nonexistent to start with due to the overhanging trees but this made it even worse.
However, I decided to battle on and got a couple of shots. Pixel-Peepers need look away as these shots were taken at ISO 20000, yes, TWENTY THOUSAND, it’s not a typo! To help, I opened the aperture to f/4, but the depth of field was far too shallow, so stopped down a little. Due to the movement, I had to raise the shutter speed to 1/400sec which still wasn’t ideal, but at a least I have these 2 shots to show you. I will return again on a clear day to see if it makes any difference. I’ll need to be quick as they don’t take too long to fledge.
