Cliff Swallow
May 2012 – Tule Lake, California
Technically, this colony of Cliff Swallows were about a mile from present-day Tule Lake, at a place called Petroglyph Point, which is associated with the nearby Lava Beds National Monument. Long ago, Tule Lake was much larger, and this cliff was on an island in the lake. The native people came out here to carve their glyphs on the rocks. But, when the white man came, he drained the lake down to a third its former size to make more farmland… and this cliff is just another random cliff in the landscape. And instead of millions of birds, we are left with thousands. So goes progress.