Yosemite Birds

White-throated Swift in flight. ©2012 James McGrew<br />
These little rockets are the most difficult birds I've tried to photograph in flight. They zip through the air with amazing speed, feathers literally making a loud zipping sound (and have reportedly maneuvered Peregrine Falcons, the fastest bird in North America), chasing insects and playing with each other while rapidly changing direction and speed.

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White-throated Swift in flight. ©2012 James McGrew
These little rockets are the most difficult birds I've tried to photograph in flight. They zip through the air with amazing speed, feathers literally making a loud zipping sound (and have reportedly maneuvered Peregrine Falcons, the fastest bird in North America), chasing insects and playing with each other while rapidly changing direction and speed.

$Steller's Jay perches on a rock and looks over my shoulder at the painting on which I worked depicting Upper Yosemite Fall. ©2012, James McGrew<br /> <br /> Members of the Corvidae, these birds also share some remarkable intelligence of their larger black colored relatives, crows and ravens. Steller's jays also exhibit beautiful plummage. However, the blue is not really pigment (a molecule that absorbs certain wavelengths and reflects other wavelengths). Instead the feathers refract blue wavelengths in certain directions. This is why you can pick up a blue feather and it appears blue in one direction but as you rotate the feather, it may change from brown to dark gray.$