Have you seen a swallow or swift?
Report your spring bird sightings
On May 4th, SFC wrote:
The chimney-swallows have come in their usual large numbers, and our summer flock of swallows is now complete. Of the six more common varieties of this bird found in North America, we have four in our neighborhood, and the others are also found within a short distance of us.
The white-bellied swallows came first to the village this year; they are generally supposed to be rather later than the barn-swallows. This pretty bird has been confounded with the European martin; but it is peculiar to America, and confined, it would seem, to our part of the continent, for their summer flight reaches to the fur countries, and they winter in Louisiana.
In American Ornithology, Alexander Wilson and Charles Lucian Bonaparte distinguished between barn swallows and chimney swallows. We would identify the latter as chimney swifts.
For readers in the Cooperstown area, have you seen any swallows or swifts this spring? I may have sighted two near Moe Pond on Friday, but I have not seen any others yet. These birds are another favorite of mine, and I have often enjoyed watching their expert flying displays as they skim insects from the lake and fields.
About 30 years ago, when training on Otsego Lake for the Clinton Regatta on a cold, rainy day in mid-April, we were surrounded by thousands and thousands of tree swallows feeding. They were so focused on eating that they were largely oblivious of us. We could probably have smacked them with our paddles. We didn't of course.
We have many pairs of tree swallows already, for about 10 days. Barn swallows tend to arrive a little later to our barn. There used to be many cliff swallows on the eaves of barns, but the last few years I haven’t seen them.