Following up on yesterday's bird migration post, I forgot to mention a neat website called BirdCast from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It gives real time, regional forecasts on migration activity. In the West, species on the move now include everything from barn swallows and sparrows to hawks and sea birds.
Speaking of the swallows, they love nesting in barns for obvious reasons, and come back to the same place each spring. Unfortunately, each year there are fewer barns to welcome them home. I've been around different horse barns for the last 15 years and they are usually greeted with disgust, instead of the pleasure and delight they deserve, considering the miracle of their long migration home from South and Central America.
Yes, they make a "mess" for a few weeks while they raise their young. But it seems like a small price to pay for the survival of a species. And while summering at the barn, they eat many times their weight in annoying flies and insects.
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