Tree Swallows

Meadowlark Botanical Gardens is a regional park in Vienna, Virginia that occasionally opens its doors to photographers (and anyone else) at 6 a.m. instead of its regular opening time of 10. I like to go when they do in order to capture the “golden hour”. I asked myself at 4:30 a.m. this morning when my alarm went off if I was really, really sure I needed to capture the golden hour, but I managed to convince myself I did so I hauled myself out of bed instead of going back to sleep. And of course I was glad I did. There were a lot of other photographers there, enough that I had to sometimes change my angle to move one of them out of the background of my shot, but it was quiet and pretty and a lot of different flowers are blooming that were simply glowing in the early morning sun. But of course I was mostly interested in the wildlife.

Tree swallows are easy to photograph if you find a box they are nesting in. They are fairly gregarious and much less afraid of humans than most birds seem to be; they will often let you get quite close to them. They will make showy little flights quite near people, which is very charming.

They also like to hang out on their nest box and pose, which I appreciate.

This is another family; the spouse in the box was nagging the one outside.