SMAP Show Me A Photo Contest Round 167 - My Attempts To Capture This Bird In Flight

Hi there Feathered Friends Community. Let's welcome Round 167 of the SMAP or Show Me A Photo Contest hosted by @nelinoeva. Read up on the contest rules and regulations here. If you haven't yet joined I do hope to see you here soon. Invite your friends too.

The theme for this week is:

FREE THEME

There's this particular bird that I see everyday when I go jogging at Villa Luz, the unopened subdivision just beside ours. Aside from its dark grayish blue, white and black colors which distinguish it easily from the other birds in the area, it is one of the most graceful, if not the most graceful, bird in flight among the rest. You see, this bird glides more and longer than most, making it look so elegant and beautiful. I have always wanted to capture this bird while flying but with just a cell phone for equipment it was quite difficult. But as the saying goes, "If there's a will, there's a way. "

Let me first introduce you to this feathered friend. Here he is.

This is the White-Breasted Woodswallow.

The white-breasted woodswallow (Artamus leucorynchus) is a medium-sized passerine bird which breeds from the Andaman Islands east through Indonesia and northern Australia. The name "woodswallow" is a misnomer as they are not closely related to true swallows. Instead, they belong to the family Artamidae, which also includes butcherbirds, currawongs and the Australian magpie. Wikipedia

The White-breasted Woodswallow's plumage is dark bluish grey on the head, neck and back with white chest and underparts, The bill of a woodswallow is bluish-grey with a black tip. White breasted woodswallows can also be identified by their short, black tail and grey feet. Their completely black tail makes them the only woodswallow lacking white on its tail. Males and females are identical in appearance.

Now as I have mentioned earlier above, the Woodswallow has piqued my interest because of the graceful and elegant manner by which it flies. So, I tried photographing them while on flight and while the photos do not do justice to their gracefulness, still it is hoped that the pictures can somehow show even just a little of it. Here goes.

They often fly close to the ground and can zoom in and out so quickly it is so hard to focus on them.

It must be breeding time as there were a lot of these woodswallows chirping and flapping their wings on this tree. My guess is the birds I captured flying are the males trying to impress the females.

There you have it. My attempts to photograph these elegant flyers. I just hope I did not fail miserably. Anyway, just waiting for Hive to moon so I can get a real good high end camera to capture moments such as these.

For this SMAP Round I would have loved to enter any of those flying photos but they're not yet that clear. So I am entering the fourth photo of this post. I hope you agree with me.

Best of luck to all the participants who so far have awesome entries. Stay safe and may you all have a blessed Sunday.

(All photos are mine. )