I was out on our local canal today.  More precisely on one of the ‘flashes’, with my camera.  (A flash, on our canal at least, is an area of open water or a small lake through which the canal passes.)   There were quite a lot of swallows around and I realised that there were young swallows congregating in the bushes that fringe the flash at the water’s edge.  The young birds were being fed by the adults who were catching insects over the water.  Here is one of the youngsters being passed some insects while the adults stays on the wing.  

It’s August now and it won’t be much longer before these swallows depart on their migration to Africa in late August or September.  Lots more feeding needed for those young birds to make a four month flight of thousands of miles to southern Africa where they spend a couple of months feeding up before a return dash to Europe for the spring.

Gear: Nikon D500 with 300mm f/4E and TC-14E iii (i.e.420mm).  1/1250, f/5.6 and ISO 3200.  This is probably a minimum shutter speed here for this subject but the light was dropping away as evening fell and the sun dipped behind trees on the opposite bank of the flash.  The other essential equipment was a kayak; this was shot from the water and there was simply nowhere to stand for about 50m.