Barn Swallow, wings raised
Hirundo rustica
Barn Swallow · Green-Wood Cemetery · 25 April 2026
A Barn Swallow over the water with the wings thrown up at the top of a beat, the forked tail spread for the turn. This is the swallow of farmyards and bridges across the world, and the pond at Green-Wood is where the Brooklyn birds hunt in April.
A foraging pass like this one is repeated dozens of times in a session, since the insects a swallow hunts rarely stay in one place long enough for a single pass to be worth much. A swallow eats on the wing, drinks on the wing, and in a good summer flies six hundred miles a day without going anywhere.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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