Post by tuchp on Sept 8, 2012 10:39:12 GMT -8
Yesterday early afternoon, around our farm and yard in S. Langley an unusual sight for us. Almost suddenly we had an extremely large group of insect eating birds swooping and flying around us. This group consisted of Purple Martins, small swifts, barn swallows and a few other swallows, possible cliff swallows. The yard was alive with them, landing on our barn roof and into a large fir tree in the field. Even the swifts were landing and all seemed to be eating something in the fir tree - the tree is full of cones but this isn't the diet of these birds. In the more than 20 years that we have lived here we have only seen swifts very high up and never have we seen a purple martin in our area. We managed a few photos but these birds move so fast it is very difficult to even get a shot and I don't have a very strong telephoto lense so the pictures are still very distant in the fir tree. It seemed so odd to have all these different birds together in a group. I know that anything is possible during migration but wonder if they might have been following a swarm of insects..... We are still shaking our heads in disbelief!
Pat
Pat
