This week’s Bird of the Week, compliments of the Weminuche Audubon Society and Audubon Rockies, is the violet-green swallow.
This is a bird seen fluttering high in the sky in the business of swifts or zipping throughout open water and fields at speeds approaching those of the peregrine falcon. It catches and consumes bugs midair, relying totally on the accessibility of aerial bugs for food.
Unlike the carefully associated tree swallow, which can consume some berries when bugs are not available, the violet-green needs to pull back south when freezing weather condition drives bugs from the skies. Most spend the winter season in Mexico or Central America. In the breeding season, the violet-green is a swallow of the West, discovered in the western third of the United States and into western Canada and Alaska.
Often nesting in little groups, these cavity nesters are discovered in open forests with deciduous and evergreen trees as long as there are standing dead ones. Like numerous secondary cavity nesting types, they mainly depend upon woodpeckers to excavate holes where they can build their nests. People sign up with woodpeckers in offering nest websites with manufactured nest boxes.
Violet and green would be a better suited name for these birds whose metal green backs and purple rumps can appear rainbowlike in sunshine. In flight, try to find a brilliant white tummy, and a white back spot formed by spots on the flanks that almost fulfill on the rump. Their brief tails appear square or just a little notched.
It is much easier to observe the facial pattern formed by white from the throat which extends behind and above the eyes when the birds are set down. It is possible to differentiate sexes in a view that reveals the mottled face pattern of the female or tidy white of the male.
Violet-green swallows was among the victims when a disconcerting unexpected die-off of migratory birds happened mainly in New Mexico in September of 2020. Hundreds of countless birds died in a brief time period. Causal elements are believed to consist of an unexpected cold wave, worsened by extended dry spell and wildfire smoke that left the birds in poor physical condition.
For details on occasions, check out www.weminucheaudubon.org and www.facebook.com/weminucheaudubon/.
