I spent much of the afternoon today at the mustard field on Arlington Rd, 0.8
mi n. of its intersection with Kiptopeke Drive, looking through hundreds of
Tree Swallows. When I arrived after lunch, Brenda Tekin and party were
there, having already found one of the Cave Swallows, which soon returned for
a few photographs. At one point, there were 4 Cave Swallows visible in the
air at once, the same number that had been present earlier in the day.
Brenda picked out a leucistic (nearly all-chalk-white) Tree Swallow, with
only a few dark flight feathers, which we also photographed as it fed low
over the field. After about 20 more minutes, a swallow appeared among the
Trees that seemed to be a good candidate for a Violet-green Swallow, and we
attempted to photograph that as well (hopefully, we got something on it).
The bird's face showed white well above the eye (on both sides of the head),
so that the eye stood out quite starkly against the white face. This
character is something I've never seen in a Tree Swallow, not even anything
remotely close to it. The bird was always easy to single out among the Tree
Swallows, even on a cursory scan -- the head looked essentially white, even
from a distance. The bird flew as close as 20 feet from us, at eye level, so
it was not difficult to study it well, for about 10 minutes.
The bird was a bit more delicate that the Trees, it seemed, but neither
Brenda nor myself could say with certainly that it looked *consistently*
smaller. With birds constantly in motion in the air, it was tough to judge
relative size. The bird was an adult, with green-glossed back, certainly
consistent with Violet-green, but the color didn't show a startling
difference from the Tree Swallows' back; it might have been a more
golden-casted green, but it wasn't the emerald or pool-table green one
associates with male Violet-green. Finally, the white wrapping up around the
flanks onto the rump was pronounced, but not quite as much as I associate
with most Violet-greens I see in Mexico and in the West. I wonder if there
is any variation in this feature in Violet-green, in ad. females perhaps.
Something to look into. I will post photographs if they're worth a look.
Incredibly, also at this site, there were four occasions on which a Northern
Rough-winged Swallow put in an appearance (presumably the same bird, but
possibly not); a Bank Swallow appeared there as I was speaking with Todd Day
by cell phone; and a Cliff Swallow appeared twice, once in the morning, and
once in the afternoon. Like the Cave Swallows, the Cliff tended to stay
above 30 feet in the air.
Ned Brinkley
Cape Charles, VA
You are subscribed to VA-BIRD. To post to this mailing list, simply send email
to va-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx. To unsubscribe, send email to
va-bird-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field.
