[obol] Barn Swallows staging near Vancouver, WA

[Tim Rodenkirk]

Pretty cool Floyd!  While out on the north spit of
Coos Bay this past Saturday morning (the 1st) there
was heavy movement of Barn Swallows, one of the
birders I was with said he'd never seen so many.  I
estimate in the many hundreds or few thousands.  It
was especially noticeable on the beach where a long
line of them were zooming south. By 11 AM there were
practically no swallows around at all.

Off subject, we also saw a couple pipits that morning
the first I've seen this fall.

Merry migration,
Tim R
Coos Bay

--- Floyd Schrock <fschrock at macnet.com> wrote:

> While checking the NEXRAD (weather radar) in recent
> days to see images 
> of the Yamhill Co. Barn Swallow morning fly-out, I
> noticed a brief 
> green blip on several clear mornings at the same
> time just northwest 
> of Vancouver, Washington.  Following a hunch that it
> might also 
> indicate a roosting flock of Barn Swallows, I drove
> up there this 
> evening to look for it, and found it.  As I
> expected, since the green 
> blip on NEXRAD is not as large as the one here near
> the Willamette 
> River, the size of the flock there appears to be
> quite a bit smaller, 
> but still significant.  I estimated the number of
> Swallows that I 
> could see this evening to be somewhere between
> 15,000 and 25,000. 
> However, I did not have a clear view of the area at
> the crucial time, 
> so the number could have been much higher than that.
> 
> The area I searched is about 5 to 10 miles northwest
> of Vancouver 
> between Vancouver Lake and the Columbia River. 
> Between 7:00 and 8:00 
> p.m. I drove back and forth along Northwest Lower
> River Road where 
> there are many fields of standing corn.  I saw Barn
> Swallows scattered 
> throughout the area, but had trouble determining
> where they were 
> headed.  Eventually, from a distance, I saw the
> birds gathering, but 
> when (at 7:55) I finally found a direct line of
> sight to where they 
> were apparently going to roost, the cloudy sky was
> quite dark, and (by 
> comparing the timing and behavior of the flock I've
> been watching) I 
> believe that many of the birds had already gone
> down.
> 
> I hope some birders in the Portland/Vancouver area
> might occasionally 
> be able to monitor this flock during the next few
> weeks, although it 
> seems to be using a location even less accessible
> than the flock here 
> in Yamhill Co.  For anyone who might have a chance
> to search, the best 
> vantage point this evening was exactly at milepost 9
> along Northwest 
> Lower River Road.  Unfortunately, there is no place
> to pull off the 
> road at that point, but the flock was directly east
> of there at a 
> distance of about 1/2 mile.  I could not have seen
> the flock without 
> binoculars.  There is space to pull off the road
> about 1/4 mile north 
> of that spot.  I don't know if the coordinates on
> Google Earth are 
> accurate, but milepost 9 appears to be at about 45
> deg. 42' 31 N;  122 
> deg. 45' 30.55 W.  Maybe I will have to give in and
> get a GPS unit --  
> one more gadget.
> 
> ========================
> Floyd Schrock
> McMinnville, Oregon  U.S.A.
> http://empids.blogspot.com/
> ========================
> 
> 
> 
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