Swallows

Rivaling the bats of Congress bridge, Austin has a lesser known but more spectacular display of flying creatures - the flocking of migrating purple martins at Highland Mall. Rich clued me in on this and we took the kids there on Friday evening. Ava joined us there and we laid out the blanket in the parking lot of what used to be highland mall right beside the Mifft bus - which Rich had driven over.

We watched a spectacular sunset with about a hundred other spectators while the swallows started collecting high overhead. Pretty soon there were (according to the ladies from the Audubon Society) around six hundred thousand birds up there. In the course of about half an hour they packed themselves into four medium sized Texas live oak trees. These birds breed in North America - all the way from Texas and Louisiana up to Canada and they winter in South America - Brazil and southwards. They fly a couple of hundred miles each day and flock in large groups like this.

At the end of the evening after the birds were more or less settled in for the night the kids went to take a closer look from under the trees. A nice stranger showed up and held an umbrella over their heads while they chatted and hung around and admired the quivering blackened trees.