museum.gov.ns.ca
Status Five records. In 1968 on Sable Island, Christel and Norman Bell noticed five swallows on 11 May and nine on 17-19 May that seemed “odd.” Later that month Ian A. McLaren saw “Cliff Swallows” with pale throats and on 21 June he found a dead bird identifiable as a Cave Swallow.
The following year, up to five birds were seen on Sable Island from 13 to 30 June, at times perched on a clothesline with other swallows, including Cliff Swallows (the Bells and E. Garvey). Since then there have been three more records. On 16 May 1971 Ian A. McLaren and party collected one on Seal Island. In summer 1982 there were two well-documented sight records: one was among Cliff Swallows at Louisbourg on 9 July, seen by a party of birding tourists led by Bret Whitney and David Wolf, and the other was at Cherry Hill Beach, Lunenburg County, on 14 August, where it was spotted by Lise and Shirley Cohrs amongst a flock of Barn Swallows eating beach flies.
Remarks The normal range of this bird lies far south of Nova Scotia in the extreme southern United States, Mexico, parts of South America, and islands in the Caribbean Sea. It is distinguished from our Cliff Swallow by its pale throat and dark forehead and rump. Both specimens appear to be attributable to the Cuban subspecies, Hirundo fulva cavicola (W.E. Godfrey, letter to I.A. McLaren, 16 August 1971). How these birds, otherwise unrecorded on the east coast north of Florida, came to be here is a mystery; perhaps they became associated with migrant flocks of Cliff Swallows.
