Put a bunch of people on a platform and have them looking at the sky for hours on end, and you never know what might fly by. Birders at the Florida Keys Hawkwatch at Curry Hammock State Park in Monroe County, Florida, had not one, not two, but three ABA Code 4 Bahama Swallows fly over the platform yesterday, 10/26.
Photo by Alexander Harper, used with permission
Curry Hammock State Park is on Crawl Key, near mile marker 56.2 off of US 1, and just over 100 miles south of Miami, Florida. The first bird was originally seen around 2:30 pm. The birds were seen in association with other swallow species, including Barn, Northern Rough-winged and Cliff. Notably, one Cave Swallow was also seen the same day.
In addition to the three birds at Curry Hammock, single individual Bahama Swallows were seen at Cape Florida earlier in the day and at Long Key state park the day before, making a total of five individuals seen, though the same birds could have been represented more than once in that number.
Bahama Swallow is known in the ABA Area from about 9 previous well-documented records and a number of speculative ones, all from south Florida. The most recent of which was in 1992, an individual that associated with a Cave Swallow colony near Homestead, Miami-Dade, Florida, for 5 consecutive springs.