Date: 8/15/25 7:17 pm From: Matt S. <accipiter22...> Subject: [MASSBIRD] August 15, 2025 Parker River NWR, Newburyport, Tree Swallow Bonanza..10K Flock!
Hello all,
It’s mid-August so it was time for my annual tree swallow trip to Parker
River. Really, it’s one of the two or three highlights of my year. Somehow
after I go and see the swallows I feel like the year is “complete”, which
may sound odd for a mid-August trip, but it just does. Maybe it’s that,
for me, this is the greatest natural spectacle I see every year, or somehow
it feels like a book-end to spring migration. Or maybe because it feels
like a cap on summer. I don’t know. I suppose one of the advantages of
living close now is that I can have this cap a few times without the long
drives.
Today as soon as I was pulling in to the refuge I had a good feeling.
There were swallows right along the road as I pulled in, and then Lot 1 had
a few hundred in it. Some years I come and there’s not a ton, still a lot
by almost any other standard, but not a ton by August Parker River
standards. Today I had a feeling it would be good. It was probably the
best flight I have ever seen. They were all along the road as I drove up,
and just as I got to the maintenance sheds there were about 1000 to the
north of that, and then to the south the field was boiling with swallows. I
headed to North Pool Overlook since they seemed to be massing there, and
they were coming up over the water and then riding up and over the dike,
almost like they had mini thermals carrying them. Another guy was there
watching them, and in the distance we saw something approaching, and
realized it was this gigantic…mass…of tree swallows. It was probably close
to 4000 in that one mass alone. It started at Hellcat and was moving
towards us, almost like this orb or something floating along. As it got
nearer it broke up and they started to careen all around us, above us,
skimming the pool, skirting over the dike, festooning the trees. It was
one of the coolest experiences I have had at Parker, or anywhere.
After that I headed to Hellcat, and the shore-side had another 1500 or so,
though the dike there was bereft of swallow, likely since they had all
moved to NPO. There were plenty of dowitcher around, and some lesser and
greater yellowlegs right next to each other. It really drives home the
point that lesser are roughly killdeer sized and greater…are much larger.
After that I worked farther down, sometimes I have good luck at stage, and
there was a smattering there of swallow, but not much else. An
oystercatcher had been spotted at Emerson Rocks, so I headed over there and
had some folks that were on it with scopes let me have a peak. Always nice
to see the clowns of the shore.
At that point I figured things were settling down, I had 7500 swallows, not
a bad haul, and I started heading out, retracking through the areas that
were mobbed with swallows. As I pulled through the curves, I came around a
bend just south of Lot 1 and let out a surprised expletive. Just ahead of
me, maybe 200 yards, there was a cloud of swallows that was unlike anything
I have ever seen. This conglomeration looked like a living organism made
of thousands, just hovering in mid-air, and then, to the right, another
cloud lifted off, and then another, each of them had several thousand
swallows in it. It began streaming towards me, and I was holding my
cellphone taking a video, forgetting that I had all my camera gear. I was
stunned. They streamed around and behind me and the other people there,
even people that were not there birdwatching just stopped, the birds
literally stopped traffic. The swallows went around us, behind us, swirled
behind, enveloped us. I am almost positive it felt like the air cooled as
they clouded the air. I set up my camera to take video, and what I got
does not do it justice as they flock was already thinning as it streamed
by. I would estimate that this flock alone had 10,000 on the low end and
maybe 13,000 on the high end. I have never seen anything like this in my
life. After I saw that, then I felt that sense of completion and headed on
out, smiling the whole way home, and looking forward to picking through my
video footage.
