Lots of swallows in farm country, and they love the barbed wire fencing for perching. The nice thing about these quiet roads is that you can park on the side of the road and photograph from inside the car (through the open window, of course!). This one was preening for awhile and then rubbed its wings behind its back feverishly...to the naked eye it just looked a bit more fluffed-up as it did this, but low and behold when reviewing the images from that sequence it had its wings way out there in a few of the frames. Interesting poses were thus had...
Canon 30D + 100-400L @400mm, aperture priority, evaluative metering, 1/320s., f/7.1, ISO 800, +1.3 EC, natural light, handheld (lens leaning on window frame), cropped off corners after slight rotation.
Looks like he is revving up that wing for take off.
Nice background, sharp, well exposed,nice catchlight.
Can't say that barbed wire is my favorite perch, but it is certainly a common perch in farm country (I grew up in Iowa, about as farm country as you can get.)
Cool image Daniel, like the eye contact. Have you tried catching them in flight? I am sure you can have lots of fun, as they tend to normally fly back to the same perch TFS
Lovely IQ and the fanned tail with bit of blur looks great. Super BG, but bad luck about the perch (As Harshad said we should make barbwire natural perches)
Lovely blues on the swallow Dan, and certainly stands out against your clear smooth BG. The light looks nice and soft, and wonder what ss you would have needed to freeze the wing movement.