Welcome Swallows are usually quite difficult birds to photograph, in my experience. They’re small and very swift, so flight shots are a serious achievement! Even when perched they don’t stick around for too long, and are usually in difficult positions (eg: the telephone wires). So when we happened across a small family of them nesting in the rocks on the sea shore, it was a great opportunity to get some nice photographs in a natural habitat. A juvenile caught our attention, and led us to find the cave where the nest was. The parents were flying to and fro, feeding the youngsters.
This adventurous juvenile was hopping and fluttering around the rocks, while the others stayed in the nest. The wide yellowish gape, scruffy plumage and lack of a long tail marks this one as a baby – and those little red eyebrows led to the nickname ‘Grumpling’!
Mum and Dad weren’t too sure about us creeping around on the rocks, so they kept a watchful eye in between feeding forays. Flights shots were impossible as it was blustery, and as soon as the Swallows launched off the rock they were lost in the wind.
Grumpling at the mouth of the little rock-cave where the nest was. The nest itself wasn’t visible, it’s at the top right behind the overhang. We could hear the other babies peeping incessantly though!
One of the parents sitting by the mouth of the cave. Feeding so many babies almost constantly must be tiring – especially when they get to be as big as you are!
Little Grumpling did a fair share of begging for food as well – not quite old enough to manoeuvre through the air to catch insects yet! It wouldn’t be long, though.
A week later all of the babies were fledged and had left the nest. It was just as well – there was some inclement weather that drove the waves right up the shore and into the cave. Had the nest still been in use, they would have been washed away.
Welcome Swallows are the only species of their kind in New Zealand, although we get rare vagrants of various Martin and Swift species from Australia. They are a self-introduced species, previously a vagrant from Australia, and became common here in the 1960’s.
