Swooping Swallows

Well, here I was thinking that I was totally blip-less today. I was feeling rather ok about it and rationalized that a day off would be a fine punctuation mark to ease from Daily Italy Spring Blips to less frequent Santa Cruz Summer Blips.  But here you go, I DID take a picture!  This morning I decided it was time to get back into my “aerobic” exercise routine.  I rode my SOMA bike up to the campus East Field, changed out of my bike shoes into my running shoes, then ran/walked around the track.  It’s been 3 months since these ‘pushing 70’ legs ran anywhere, so alternating walk/run was the wise thing to do.  When I ran between the 400-500 meter marks on the far side of the track, swallows would swoop toward, around and over me.  I’m not sure why they aimed at me, but the swifts in Umbria did the same thing.  They flew in ricochet pattern above the rooftops near our terrace and sometimes they swooped up and toward my head before flying into a roof tile ‘nest’.  I wasn’t really sure if the birds at the track were swallows or swifts or some other fast flying LBB (little brown bird), so I tried to photo ID them. My iPhone 14 has a groovy “I” information feature.  If there are enough details, the algorithm can identify animal or plant species.  Very cool.   I took a couple dozen photos and managed to get a handful of pics with a bird in the frame, three of which had enough detail to get a positive ID.  The swooping birds on campus have white rump side-patches which identifies them as the Violet-green swallow.  It turns out that swifts and swallows are not closely related, but have similar lifestyles based on catching insects in flight. Maybe they aim at me because I may have bugs????