Juvenile Northern Rough-winged Swallows
Susan and I took a walk up Chippewa Creek in the Cuyahoga Valley
National Park this morning. (Okay, technically that section is within the
Cleveland Metro Parks purview.) A creek walk is part of a ritual we’ve done
with our grandchildren for the past five or six years. Our leader today was our
six-year-old granddaughter, Lily. This kid takes to the water like a duck and
is turning into an accomplished fisher as well—to mix a metaphor.
So while Susan and I paid a lot of attention to the avian activity
around the creek, Lily snagged about 10 pounds of minnows with her little net.
In the heat of the day we came upon a family of Northern Rough-winged Swallows,
six juveniles, plus adults feeding their brood.
The species is not uncommon in our area—unless you’re working on a
census in the park, as we did all last week, and did not see a single Northern
Rough-winged Swallow. Today, we walked up on this clutch of birds, which did
not seem to care a bit about us; looked at us hopefully in fact.
Go figure.
No comments:
Post a Comment