Their timing was perfect in so many ways. But then again, it always is. I had forgotten that.
In late spring, in one of the surest signs of the looming summer season, the swallows return to Nyack.
As if by magic, one day, by the millions, they appear. I always hear their cacophony long before I actually see them.
Walking in town down Broadway, their loud clicks and squawks signaling their presence, I looked up to see hundreds of them darting and diving around one of the old church steeples. They fly like demons, making a resounding racket that is inconsistent with their diminutive size. I have always likened them to lightning-fast fighter jets sighting and then quickly attacking their prey.
They nest in the old church steeples and high in the mighty Palisades that frame Nyack and the surrounding communities along the Hudson River from Fort Lee, New Jersey, to Beacon, New York, and beyond. The Hudson provides a ready supply of the insects that form the swallows’ diet, so they are beneficial. But they are also beautiful. Many species have such brightly colored plumage that they seem iridescent! But it’s their aerial acrobatics that really put a smile on my face.
This year’s spring weather has been so gloomy as to be downright depressing. I know that I was feeling it and that I was not alone. After a long winter, we look forward to the temperance of spring. After a few teasing days, it just never seemed to arrive until one day when the sun came out and the swallows appeared.
Frank LoBuono is a Nyack resident, photographer, blogger and retired CBS News journalist.
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Photo credit: George Pejoves