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. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]