Swarming martins

Last summer I was busy watching a baseball game on TV and wasn't paying attention to the weather. Right at dusk I heard the weather alarm going off on my PC alerting me of an oncoming severe thunderstorm.

I darted to the door to take a look outside and see if it was too late to lower my racks. Wow, it was a tough call, as my martins had already went into their gourds for the night, and it was almost dark and it would take me at least 7-8 minutes to lower them all. But I decided to do it.

When lowering the racks, my entire colony of martins left their gourds and were circling above waiting on me to finish. Once I did finish, I ran to the house to get out of the martins way so they could reenter their gourds. My entire colony of matins were flying in one swarm, seeming to following the leader. They kept making sweeps to the gourd racks getting closer with each swoop. I was getting nervous as I could barely see them. They darkened the sky around the racks when making their passes.

The huge swarm of martins moving as in one body started to slow in their passes as if to land, but it only took one or two martins to fly away and the entire swarm flew with them. Finally the huge dark swarm of martins swooped down and entered their gourds almost in one movement, appearing as if the swarm had merged with the gourd racks.

Wow, my nervousness subsided and I swore to myself that this would never happen again. I needed to pay better attention to the weather.