Bank Swallow

Riparia riparia · Swallows & Martins

Bank Swallows carrying nesting material

Staten Island, 5 July 2026

Two Bank Swallows flying in with something pale in the bill, grass or feather, lining for a burrow rather than the burrow's structure, which the birds dig with their feet and bills directly into the sand. A nesting colony this active means the bank itself is close by, out of frame.

The colony is the whole life of the species. Bank Swallows do everything together, feeding, bathing, and mobbing anything that comes near the bank, and a single face can hold several hundred pairs.

Bank Swallow banking

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.

Bank Swallows in flight

Staten Island, 5 July 2026

Two Bank Swallows over the marsh on Staten Island, the nearer bird's white throat and crisp brown breast band identifying it. Bank Swallows are the smallest swallow in North America and the only one that nests exclusively in burrows: tunnels up to a metre or more deep, dug into vertical faces of sand or soil, in colonies that can run to hundreds of pairs in a single bank.

The second bird, caught in a tighter turn, is almost certainly the same species, though the motion blur makes it a harder call. In Britain the same bird is the Sand Martin.