Swallows at Stone Harbor

Birds of a feather really do flock together.

 Our family recently spent a few days in Stone Harbor, NJ.    We enjoyed our time together-- swimming in the ocean and having fun on the beach (you are never too old to build your first sand castle or surf the waves as a couple of our group did!).  I enjoyed all that (though I've been to the beach many times), but I have to say one of the most awesome things at the beach were the tree swallows!

There were hundreds... thousands... and they were amazing to watch!

If you look carefully in the sky in the photo above, you can see them all the way across the width of the photo.

It was really neat to see them, because I've been missing our swallows at home.  We have both tree swallows and barn swallows that make their summer homes in our area but they had left already.

They arrive at our place in the beginning of April (the last two years it was April 3rd).  Tree swallows typically use several of our nesting boxes and they also nest in natural tree cavities.  Once they have raised their families, they don't stay around long though.  Now I know where they may have gone...

I like to think some of our own tree swallows might have been in this huge flock at Stone Harbor!

It is one of those things where it was truly awesome to see in person, but probably doesn't look quite as impressive in photos.  But I'm going to share some more photos with you anyway!

They would stream along thru the sky, first in one direction and then the other.

Every little while they would land in the bushes in the sand dunes.

That's the ocean you can see in the background.

Or on the electric lines in the town.

Then a person would walk by, or they would just decide it was time to fly again, and an amazing number would rise up.

It was really cool!!!

How about a straight up view?

a little closer...

Isn't the pattern they make neat?

I guess you can tell I was fascinated by them.  I think they were all tree swallows, although I did see two barn swallows (or at least some kind of swallows with color on their breasts... I didn't have my binoculars at the time) while I was walking on the beach.

We discussed how many there might have been, but really, I have no idea.  I looked on eBird.  Some people reported an X for their data at a location just south of where we were.  The X basically means they couldn't count them and I would agree!  One person at this location guessed at 1500. (These are all tree swallows).

I'd like to talk to Herschel Gomez, who, as you can see in this next screenshot, listed 672... to see how he arrived at that number.

We saw the tree swallows in Stone Harbor for a couple of days.  One morning I watched them come rising up out of the dunes, where they must have spent the night.  On our last day, they were gone.  Maybe they had eaten all the insects that were to be had in the air of Stone Harbor.  Though tree swallows will eat the fruits of waxmyrtle and babyberry bushes, I did not observe any of them doing that.  If you would like to read more about tree swallows and their migration, I highly recommend this website, which has lots of interesting information.
Just a note about eBird, as well.  Did you know that anyone can use it to look up data?  If you click on this link, you can 'explore data' by location or species.  That's how I found the info above as well as these maps.

The screenshot above shows the Stone Harbor area, with the tree swallow sighting locations.  Here's one from just farther south in one of the birding capitals of the USA... Cape May.

Next is something almost totally unrelated, except for the fact that I think it is also cool.  I love to look at maps online.  You can explore the world that way without leaving home (for instance, 'travel' through the Panama Canal!).  I found these 'trees' along the coast near Charleston SC.

Perhaps the tree swallows will spend sometime there on their way south!

Good bye, tree swallows... until next year.