Mark B Bartosik
Well-known member
Fluttering dive (aerial shake) how many different bird’s species did you see doing that?
Only recently I found time to observe and photograph Swallow-tailed Kite. One can fall in love from the first sight with this bird being mesmerized just by its magnificent look and graceful flight. Those birds are spending most part of the day in mid-air. They are even consuming hunted preys when on the wing. Insects, small lizards etc are snatched from tree branches usually taken together with piece of branch to be separated later. Everything in mid-air. With so highly aerial bird I should expect more mid-air behaviors but I have to admit that I was taking by surprise to see first time birds shaking their plumage on the wing. All birds do that more or less often when perching but I never have seen them doing that in flight. Swallow-tailed Kite does that in the very impressive way, I should add. When high in air it folds its wings and starts the dive with ruffled feathers then makes several shakes during the dive. At the end of the dive it comes out of it in one graceful move of smoothing plumage and spreading the wings.
This aerial shake is well known and well documented as a Swallow-tailed Kite behavior but I also would like to find out if anybody observed this behavior performed by another bird species and if yes which one. Perhaps links to some photos?
Even that I observed this behavior several times only in couple cases I was fast enough to point my lens. My Canon 20D had problem to keep focus on very fast falling bird (whole display last a second or two) and only a few frames were in fairly acceptable focus. Here they are:
http://www.pbase.com/mbb/image/64488336
http://www.pbase.com/mbb/image/64488364
Only recently I found time to observe and photograph Swallow-tailed Kite. One can fall in love from the first sight with this bird being mesmerized just by its magnificent look and graceful flight. Those birds are spending most part of the day in mid-air. They are even consuming hunted preys when on the wing. Insects, small lizards etc are snatched from tree branches usually taken together with piece of branch to be separated later. Everything in mid-air. With so highly aerial bird I should expect more mid-air behaviors but I have to admit that I was taking by surprise to see first time birds shaking their plumage on the wing. All birds do that more or less often when perching but I never have seen them doing that in flight. Swallow-tailed Kite does that in the very impressive way, I should add. When high in air it folds its wings and starts the dive with ruffled feathers then makes several shakes during the dive. At the end of the dive it comes out of it in one graceful move of smoothing plumage and spreading the wings.
This aerial shake is well known and well documented as a Swallow-tailed Kite behavior but I also would like to find out if anybody observed this behavior performed by another bird species and if yes which one. Perhaps links to some photos?
Even that I observed this behavior several times only in couple cases I was fast enough to point my lens. My Canon 20D had problem to keep focus on very fast falling bird (whole display last a second or two) and only a few frames were in fairly acceptable focus. Here they are:
http://www.pbase.com/mbb/image/64488336
http://www.pbase.com/mbb/image/64488364
