Swallows

Paletta Park, Burlington, ON. April 29^th. 2021.  The dreary-day context of this story is as important as its stars. I left home around 8.30 under a blanket of light fog knowing that rain was on its way. It was cool, not cold, but the kind of damp-cool that eventually finds its way into your bones and triggers shivers. 

“Why go out?” you may ask. Well, fog in migration seasons can sometimes make very good birding days, it grounds birds that might otherwise fly over us. So I went to one of our spring-birding hot-spots and was rewarded with many first-of-the-year sightings and sounds.  Many Yellow-rumped Warblers worked the tops of one or two trees and the male in the photo above eventually made his way down to my level. There should be many more Yellow-rumps to come in the next two weeks, probably enough for us to become blasé about them, today they were a delight as befits a pretty and handsome little bird.

I could hear the single note call of a Baltimore Oriole but couldn’t find it although I was sure it was very close, a little frustrating, but they too will be plentiful very soon.  Another heard-but-not-seen was a Northern Waterthrush, singing its sharp and choppy song from deep in a tangle of old and flattened vines, again I searched and stared, but nothing.

We were turning to leave when I spotted a solitary inconspicuously dark grey bird sitting quietly minding its own buisness. A moment or two’s discussion with a fellow birder and we figured it was a Northern Rough–winged Swallow, probably the least visually attractive of all of our summer swallows.  To illustrate the point, here’s one that I photographed last year, a very plain-looking bird.

Still, this is a migrant who has flown not less than 3,000 Km. from coastal Mexico or anywhere else in Central America to get here. A long journey by any measure, and it has arrived to a cool and damp day relying on there being enough flying insects around to keep it fuelled. 

Moments later it took a short flight to a bare tree at the waterside where it sidled up to a handful of other swallows. Binoculars again, and I could see the group was a mix of Barn Swallows and Rough-wings. The Barn Swallows could have journeyed even further, at least 4,000 Km.  anywhere from Central America to Patagonia.

And yet as I watched, more swallows appeared from the foggy lake. They must have flown across at least 6Km. to make this landfall, in zero visibility. They all gathered on that same tree, preening, wing-stretching and whispering welcome to each new arrival.

Think of almost anywhere between Lake Ontario and Costa Rica, and these birds have flown over and past it in the last two or three months.  Almost any aspect of that journey and the fact that they have made it (with maybe a few hundred kilometres to go) is more than enough to make swallows My Birds of the Day.