Swallows is the same.  More or less.  I mentioned how they partition niches based on where they feed, with barn swallows down low?  Violet-green swallows feed higher up, around seven to twelve meters.  They are white beneath, and green and violet on top.  More or less.  At that elevation and as fast as they fly, I’d have never been able to ID them, without a few exceptional sunny days.

My father is harried by demons and can’t stand living in the same place more than a few months.  As he’s gotten old, he’s had to slow down the rate of moves more than he would prefer.  But after the first time he got a housing voucher, he briefly lived in an old folks home overlooking the Green River.  There he went off the rails for birding, for the first time ever, getting too much equipment and drawing too many birds, which bothered the neighbors.  One time he filmed a seal swimming in the river – way upstream from the Sound.  I wasn’t there for most of it – certainly not for the inevitable problem era when he made everybody too mad and flamed out and lost the home.  But I did have one visit.

On that occasion, we sat on his balcony on a sunny day, about ten meters elevation.  Ever sit on a balcony above a body of water?  In the summer?  The fucking insects were huge.  Creepy things I can’t even describe, multiple inches.  They eventually scared me indoors.  But before they did, I saw many violet-green swallows from above, from pretty close by, and that means I could see the violet-green distinctly shining in the sun.

Some years later, at the same Uwajimaya that once made my home boy herfy, I came out into the bright summer sun and saw violet-green swallows swooping around a paved corporate courtyard that usually only has house sparrows, pigeons, and gulls.  Were they nesting in the rafters of Uwajimaya, or the buck nasty hobo bar Joe’s?  It was a little magical.  I have no idea how they were getting enough food without those fat river insects.

Last place I saw them was in (hopefully) the last apartments I ever lived in, up in Federal Way.  There were swallows flying around at the usual height, with white bellies.  I couldn’t make out the top color, but I used the birding app to recognize their squeaks.  Violet-green.

They’re pretty cool.  If you’re in their range, hope you get to see them someday.

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