Subject: [Tweeters] Fill Blizzard of Swifts and Swallows
Date: Jun 7 06:14:58 2008
From: Constance Sidles - constancesidles at gmail.com


Hey tweets, yesterday, a perfect blizzard of swifts and swallows
swirled around the Fill - hundreds of birds hunting millions of bugs.
There was a massive hatch of insects - clouds so big you could imagine
shapes. It took me back to my younger days when I would lie back
against a tree, gaze up at puffy white clouds and see faces, otters,
flying horses, and dragons. Yesterday was like that, except the shapes
of insect clouds were more sinister - Frankenstein, cobras, killer
fogs. I say "sinister," knowing that insect aficionados will buzz at me
for being species-centric. In bug circles, you know, fans rail against
the public's panda standard of cuteness. However, I already have eight
mosquito bites that itch like crazy, and it's only June, so I have to
admit that I keep no lists of "bugs I have known and loved."

Having said that, the swallows and swifts were clearly in heaven. They
swooped back and forth so fast and in such numbers, they resembled rush
hour in Cairo, when thousands of cars navigate at high speed with no
discernible rules, each driver with one hand on the steering wheel and
the other on the horn. Somehow, like my Cairo taxi driver, the birds
always managed to avoid bumping into each other, no matter how many
there were and how many different directions they took. There were:
Barn, Cliff, Tree, and Violet-green Swallows, and hordes of Vaux's
Swifts.

Best of all, soaring above the crowds were eight Black Swifts, regal
scimitars in flight. I saw the first two while I was driving toward the
dime parking lot and almost drove into a ditch. At first I tried to
track them by car, but they were so fast and had filed such a twisty
flight plan that eventually, I flung open my door, did a jete out of
the car, and pirouetted around and around, binoculars clapped to my
eyes. As an aside, I have observed that the longer I bird, the less shy
I am - I seem to have lost my dread of standing out in a crowd or
looking different. I guess after the third time a cop stops you to ask
what you're doing with high-powered binoculars in the dawn hours,
walking slowly, and muttering to yourself (or worse, pishing), you tend
to lose your fear of seeming weird.

Anyway, the Fill was glorious in the pearly mist yesterday, when the
dogs and people mostly stayed home, and only the birds were there. They
let me enter their world for a brief time, until the mist became rain
and drove me indoors, leaving them to their fields and woods, the lake
and the sky. A glance back showed one lone scimitar, black against the
high clouds high far past Husky Stadium, wheeling and soaring and then
gone. - Connie, Seattle

constancesidles at gmail.com