Bank Swallow banking
Riparia riparia
Bank Swallow · Staten Island · 5 July 2026
A Bank Swallow through the top of a turn over the marsh on Staten Island, the white throat, brown chest band and white belly all showing cleanly. The smallest swallow on the continent, and a bird of riverbanks and sandpits wherever there is a vertical face to dig into; the colony here is in a bank out of frame.
Bank Swallows feed entirely on the wing, and a colony hunting together over water or open ground can look more like a cloud of insects than a group of birds until one banks close enough to resolve.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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