When I first heard the call, I couldn’t quite place it.

Sounded a bit like a Woodswallow? But, not the usual call of the Dusky Woodswallow that we see in the area. Some years back we would get good numbers of the Dusky and they would nest among the River Red-gums.

But this call was different. Hard to tell when the birds were hawking for insects high up in the sky. Then I got a good glimpse of one, and it was grey-backed, and had a brillant white breast.
A White-breasted Woodswallow.
Normally the White-breasted do not come down this far south, and stay the northern side of the hills.
In the end I found five of them flitting about between the trees and working through the sky above.

In the river flats area of the Murray River where I grew up, it was not unusual to see large flocks of them each year. They are a communal bird and sometimes we’d see 50 or more of them along a power-line or 10-15 on a long horizontal branch. They played “Roll over and one fell out”, as one would land on the branch near the trunk of the tree and everybody would shuffle up the branch, until the one of the end had nowhere to go and would fly.

Time to sit down and wait. They began to come down lower and take rest breaks on some of the older stumps and trees in an open area. I was as eager to make some photos as they were to be back in the air hunting but we both compromised.

For about three weeks they were domicle in the one open area along the creekline, but eventually they disappeared.

Here are few from the first couple of weeks.