\nSaturday, October 28, 2006
\n Republican American\u00a0–\u00a0Oct 28 2:16 AM
\nCopyright \u00a9 2006 Republican-American<\/p>\n
Tree swallows were streaming by at a brisk pace. I estimated more than 4,000 over the first few hours after dawn on Monday, clearing out of New England on a brisk northwest wind.<\/p>\n
My primary task was counting migrant hawks at Lighthouse Point in New Haven, and there were plenty of them, too. The day’s tally topped 600.<\/p>\n
I wasn’t watching the swallows too closely, since at this time of year every one was likely to be a tree swallow. But I happened to be looking in the right place at the right time when one of Connecticut’s most interesting bird stories flashed before my eyes.<\/p>\n
The light was just right and the binoculars in the right position to get a quick but good look at a single cave swallow with all those tree swallows.<\/p>\n
Less than 30 years ago, the cave swallow was unknown in Connecticut and almost non-existent north of Mexico or the Caribbean. If you wanted to see one you had to go to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico or a few limestone caves in west Texas. They really were cave swallows.
\nThen something unusual happened. The southwestern race somehow figured out how to exploit man-made culverts as nest sites, and the Texas population exploded. In the 1980s a few cave swallows were seen at Cape May, N.J., and since then a pattern of late fall appearances in the Midwest and Northeast has developed.<\/p>\n
Each year now, usually in November, a weather system sweeping from the southwest to the northeast deposits cave swallows around the Great Lakes. From there the next strong cold front sends them hurtling southward.<\/p>\n
This mechanism has become so reliable that Connecticut birders can just about predict to the day when a noticeable flight of cave swallows will hit places such as Lighthouse Point or Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison.<\/p>\n
The bird I saw Monday was a little ahead of the curve, but we’ll probably get cave swallow flight sometime between now and the middle of November.<\/p>\n
Reach Greg Hanisek at ghanisekrep-am.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saturday, October 28, 2006 Republican American\u00a0–\u00a0Oct 28 2:16 AM Copyright \u00a9 2006 Republican-American Tree swallows were streaming by at a brisk pace. I estimated more than 4,000 over the first few hours after dawn on Monday, clearing out of New England on a brisk northwest wind. My primary task was counting migrant hawks at Lighthouse […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[413],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n