Hello, Birders. With Nathan Pieplow, Hannah, and participants in the ABA's Nocturnal Migration workshop, I got to witness an amazing congregation of Barn Swallows at Greenlee Preserve, Boulder County, at sundown (=moonrise) today, Friday, Sept. 4th. There were scores of birds in the sky above the observation tower, then hundreds, and then Alex Brown said something along the lines of, "You really need to look over there, in the reeds." In fact, thousands of Barn Swallows were coming into roost. Big swarms of hundreds of birds would put up into the sky for a short while, and then quickly rejoin the greater throng down in the cattail bed. I've seen similar spectacles with Tree Swallows in the East, where flocks of 10,000+ are not uncommon; and Nathan has seen Barn Swallows do it at big roosts on the wintering grounds in the tropics. But this was easily an order of magnitude more Barn Swallows than I'd ever seen in one place in Colorado. And then, just like that, they settled down and were silent. Other stuff out there: Pied-billed Grebes and American Coots out on the marsh, a fly-by Great Blue Heron, three Black-crowned Night-Herons, and the full moon. Ted Floyd tedfloy...@hotmail.com Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado ------------------------------- Ted Floyd Editor, Birding ------------------------------- Please support the American Birding Association: Click on http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=884482 to search the internet. Check out the American Birding Association on FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22934255714 Check out the American Birding Association on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abaoutreach Please visit the website of the American Birding Association: http://www.aba.org _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® is up to 70% faster. Now good news travels really fast. http://windowslive.com/online/hotmail?ocid=PID23391::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HYGN_faster:082009 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Colorado Field Ornithologists: http://www.cfo-link.org/ Colorado County Birding: http://www.coloradocountybirding.com/
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