Four barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) juveniles in their nest on a storage building light fixture just inside the Cain Hollow campground in the Quaker Area of Allegany State Park.

Cain Hollow Road, Allegany State Park, Salamanca, New York: 27 June 2014

part of the Allegany State Park album

My memories of camping at Allegany State Park are some of the fondest that I have from my childhood in Western New York. Not having visited in over twenty-five years, I was quite excited to return for a few nights in the Quaker Area Cain Hollow campground in late June 2014.

Although our stopover was only forty-three hours over three days, we managed to see an amazing amount of wildlife and visit a wide variety of locations within the park. As an added nostalgia bonus, we were camping in a site not far from the one that we frequented in the 1980s.

While returning to Cain Hollow one evening, I saw birds flying around some small support buildings in a field just inside the campground gate. We pulled over to investigate and as we approached on foot, Mom was the first to spot a nest of four barn swallow juveniles atop a light fixture.

They were relatively motionless as we slowly approached, took a few photographs and then moved away.

After circling the buildings in search of other nests, we moved further away to see if the parents would come by with food. They did not, but we did watch other birds flying around and feeding in the insect-rich field.