In a windless early afternoon a light shower drew me to my window on the Rondout Creek and was not surprised to see, as light rain seems to call them to flight, a group of fly-catching birds, or dancing as it often seems, making their graceful dives and swoops, some daringly close the fence installed by the Corps of Engineers around 50 years ago. There were, in numbers fewer than past years, groups of Tree, Bank and Rough-winged Swallows mixed in with Chimney Swifts and a few Phoebes, with a perched Kingbird on the other side taking in the scene. One of their swoops drew my eyes just a bit down stream with them to another group of perched observers....they, all with very dark feathers, eyes and beaks. They were sitting on the top of the fence pretty closely packed together when two of them took off to join those in flight. Closer by me and in flight, I could see that one of them had a grayish chest and whitish belly....clearly a Purple Martin pair and possibly the rest on the fence could be their brood--but were they old enough to be up in the air already? Checking my notebook, several Purple Martin pairs arrived in early May at a nearby colony bird house , giving easily enough time for incubation period as well as learning some pretty tricky flight maneuvers. This may be their first flight in the rain though! For me, it's the first time that I've seen an individual group of Purple Martins on an outing up here, perched and ready to be counted and observed as a family. There are only a few weeks left in their stay here, as over the years I've noted that always they've left just before July 4th....thankfully so, as their two-legged neighbors relish a good night of fire works on that night very close to the nesting house...a difficult situation, as just one person quietly approaching within 50 feet of their nests results in many of them taking off into a frantic, chaotic flight of circling. So sadly for their neighbor a bit upstream, they're soon to be gone from this creek's valley...too short a visit for me.
