15 September 07
Morphology in Flight
The purple ones are barn swallows, sketched this morning over the alfalfa field as they congregate before heading south, soon. The brown ones are Forster’s terns at the Berkeley Aquatic Park, sketched this afternoon after a lovely lunch.
These are slim, graceful birds with long, forked tails. They’re swift flyers and their tails give them extreme maneuverability, handy when you need to turn quickly to catch a flying insect (swallow) or a just-glimpsed fish (tern). They’re skittish and sitting still does not come easily to them…
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