OTTAWA — Cave swallows
live in Mexico and Texas and eat flying insects, so what one was doing over the
Ottawa River in November is a mystery.
Still, bird experts
confirm that grainy new photos show the first cave swallow ever to have been
sighted in the national capital — and Hurricane Sandy may have blown it here.
Two staffers at the
conservation group Nature Canada, Ian Davidson and Alex MacDonald, were the
first to see it on Saturday. Local birding expert Bruce Di Labio arrived later
for confirmation.
And the bird’s presence
in Ottawa, along with the arrival of some 50 cave swallows now visiting Lake
Ontario near Hamilton, follows a puzzling recent trend. These birds spend the
summer in the deep south but have started making trips north in fall, along the
Atlantic coast, before returning south for the winter.
Some of these have been
moving inland to the Great Lakes.
“It was at Bate Island,
flying over the Ottawa River,” MacDonald said. The cave swallow was flying with
a cliff swallow, which is native to Canada but should have gone south long ago.
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