cliff swallow
Hirundo pyrrhonota

Dogs barked, and cliff swallows skimmed in the dying glow above shell-colored towers.

The ceiling and surrounding cliffs of the grotto are home to moss, maidenhair fern and cliff swallows.

White-throated swifts, cliff swallows, canyon wrens and bumblebees of prodigious size also sailed past.

The forests in Reiek hills are home to a fascinating variety of hill birds, including the rare Peregrine falcon which one might see perched on a lofty ledge or swooping on cliff swallows.

There, three wives and some of the grown children (there are 28 in all) have their own private houses set in caves, like nests of cliff swallows.

My paddling partner, an avid birdwatcher, identified orioles, red-winged blackbirds, yellow warblers, common yellowthroats, hooded ducks, indigo buntings, cliff swallows, barn swallows and more eagles as we made our way downstream.

Later in the year, the San Juan produces excellent dry fly fishing, but we never saw a trout rise to a natural, although the cliff swallows found the hatches sufficient for their appetites.

San Juan Capistrano is also famous for its cliff swallows.

Raspy red-winged blackbirds were everywhere, and I saw eastern kingbirds, killdeer, magpies, cliff swallows and a red-tailed hawk.

The Lakeshore provides important nesting habitat for the following colonial nesting birds: herring and ring-billed gulls, double-crested cormorants, great blue herons, and cliff swallows.