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Woodswallows on their way

June 6, 2020 Don Knowler

The flight of the woodswallows passed me by this year, Coronavirus isolation cutting short my own flight to even near-distant places.
The migrant dusky woodswallows come through on migration in spring and autumn but it is the movement prior to winter that attracts attention.
This is the time when the woodswallows fly high in the sky, wheeling and turning in their rapid hunt for flying insects. In contrast, at the height of the breeding season in summer they tend to keep a lower profile, flying only short distances from the tops of wattle and gum to snatch at butterflies and dragonflies and lesser insects before flying back to their favoured perches to crunch their winged food in their short, sharp beaks.
People often confuse the woodswallows with the “true” swallows which include the welcome swallows and the tree martin. These species also migrate to Tasmania from the mainland to breed here in the summer months.
Although in flight the woodswallows might appear similar to the swallows, they are more closely related to magpies, belonging to a family which also includes the butcherbirds and currawongs.
The fact that woodswallows resemble the swallows and another aerial feeder, the swift, is a result of what is termed convergent evolution in which birds of different families develop similar characteristics when filling a certain ecological niche. In the case of woodwallows, swallows and swifts it is developing flying skills and bodies to match the demands of feeding on the wing.
But unlike the similarly-sized swallows, usually seen flying low across most open spaces like city parks, the woodswallows tend to go unnoticed.
Only one of the Artamus grounp within the wider magpie Artamidae family comes to southern Tasmania regularly and the term “dusky” in its name does its understated beauty an injustice.
Although some of the species are spectacularly coloured, the dusky woodswallow is clothed in a smoky brown plumage which has hints of radiant blue when seen in flight. It also has a steel blue bill and white tips to its tail feathers.
My woodswallow hunts were few and far between this season because, first, in mid-spring I was incapacitated by knee-replacement surgery and then the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted my ability in autumn to get out and about to more forested areas outside of Hobart.
My frustration was exacerbated by birding friends reporting sightings of woodswallows within the city limits, one of birds in early autumn at Mt Nelson.
One sunny morning in the final days of April, lamenting my lack of bird sightings in recent months, I consoled myself with a large take-away flat-white and almond croissant brought from bakery establishment in Battery Point. Sitting on a wooden bench over the road from the shop, a maple in fine crimson autumnal leaf giving me shelter from the sun, I heard an unfamiliar call coming from high in the blue sky.
A flock of woodswallows were swooping and soaring above my head, making their way north and giving me my “dusky” sighting for the year.

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