Waterbury Republican American, CT – Nov 30, 2014
All the talk has been about birds from the far north. Common redpolls, northern shrikes and a handful of other boreal species have Connecticut birders on high alert.
I got into the act Sunday afternoon when a short drive by the Southbury Training School Farm turned up a beautiful adult northern shrike at the corner of Cassidy and Purchase Brook roads. The afternoon sun lit up its pale plumage like a beacon.
But I’ve been much more fascinated during the past week by the swallows.
The mild microclimate created by a sewage treatment plant on the east shore of New Haven harbor has attracted an unseasonable group of insect-eaters. At least six swallows have been there all week, finding plenty of flying insects above the sewer beds.
The group consist of three cave swallows and three northern rough-winged swallows. Cave swallows, which nest in the Southwest, were unknown in Connecticut little more than a decade ago, but they’ve since established a pattern that carries post-breeding birds to the Great Lakes region and then south again into the New England and Middle Atlantic States in November.
The rough-winged swallows, although common breeders in Connecticut, historically cleared out of our region by late summer or early fall. However, in the last few years they’ve begun to show a tendency to linger, sometimes in large numbers.
The Niagara Falls region has hosted large flocks in the past couple years, and the birds right now in Connecticut suggest this is an emerging trend.
It might be impossible to prove, but it’s tempting to think that the late season rough-winged swallows are coming from the Southwest, following the same weather systems tied to the remarkable movements of the cave swallows.
