Cliff Swallow

About the Cliff Swallow

The Cliff Swallow is the master mason of Texas bridges. Each pair builds a gourd-shaped jug of mud pellets -- up to a thousand beakfuls of mud per nest -- plastered under a highway overpass or culvert, and they build in bustling colonies that can run to hundreds of nests packed wall to wall. Practically every river crossing in Central Texas hosts a colony, which makes this one of the most abundant summer birds in the state and, somehow, one of the easiest to never quite photograph.

In good light they are handsome: steel-blue cap and back, brick-red face, and the pale buffy rump and white forehead patch that separate them at a glance from Barn Swallows and from the squarer-tailed Cave Swallows that share many of the same bridges in Texas.

Colonies are frantic places -- birds streaming in and out, squabbling at nest entrances, gathering mud at puddle edges in shimmering clusters. My photos span an April 2022 coast trip and an April 2025 session in the Austin area as new colonies were being built.

The mud puddle is the photo op. Find the one the colony is using, settle in at eye level, and the swallows will pose on the ground a few yards away all afternoon.