The account below I sent a couple years back below was not a fluke. Brad
Sparks called me today and told me he and his family had passed along
this same road with the same result recently, on or about 7/10, though
he said the birds numbered about just a thousand. Maybe it was because
the blacktop was not fresh this time, but it is a thrill to hear this
same phenomenon is still going on. This spot is probably no longer
active for the year, but you could run across something similar along a
quiet tar road with utility lines near a place that harbors a lot of
bank swallow nests right about now: an awesome spectacle!
Bill Whan

[7/20/2013:  I just talked with Brad Sparks, who within the past few
days was driving from Columbus down to Chillicothe on Rte 23, and just
for kicks took the side road next to 23 along the road past Charlie's
Pond. This just happened to coincide with a similar date Laura and I
went this way on 7/20/2011, and Tim and Laura Dornan happened to take a
couple days earlier. All our experiences were similar: 10,000-plus bank
swallows perched on wires, or sunning themselves along the pavement, in
a one-mile stretch of this quiet roadway. A lot of the birds on the road
itself were lying flat on the blacktop, and we all thought they were
ridding themselves of parasites acquired during the nesting
season--because of the road surface's heat and petrochemical
exhalations--before migration.
        It seems this is a yearly spectacle. Probably there are numerous
quarries and aggregate industrial sites in the region along the Scioto
River, where this species can establish nesting colonies, and their
migratory flocks make use of this quiet area to assemble for their
migrations to South America. Records from the past indicate that far
larger numbers used to gather like this in northwest Ohio, but I haven't
heard much about them recently. It's definitely a spectacle worth
looking for in appropriate spots elsewhere in the state just now. BW""]

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