This is the period when swallows start to show up in Yilan and get ready to prepare their nests. They’ve been flying around for a few days now, looking for a mate and a safe place to lay eggs in the coming future.
It’s a great period for them, the warming weather leads to gazillions of mosquitoes breeding in the now floodes rice fields.
Needless to say, packs of swallows attract the interest of larger birds. There’s a fair amount of birds of prey in Taiwan, including many species of eagles, buzzards and such. Some of them live in the proximity of rice fields and live off small mammals, lizard and such, while close to the mountains there are larger birds.
Now this is the part where I’m supposed to reveal the species of the bird in the first image and explain what it does for a living. I have no clue.
It’s a falcon-eagle-buzzard looking flying thing, and it was smaller than the large eagles I see when I head to the mountains. I’ll update the post when I find out what it was.
On a technical note: taking pictures of swallows is a bloody pita. The falcon eagle thing was cool, it came flying in my direction in a straight line and I was able to take several shots before it steered away. Swallows on the other hand look like they’re on drugs ALL-THE-TIME. All images are very heavy crops because 300mm for birds is a bit too short, but I don’t see myself getting a longer lens in the near future.
Images From a Random Mind 