As the name suggests, aerofauna refers to animal life forms that occur in the aerosphere.  Specifically, the aerosphere is the world of the birds, the bats and the flying insects.   I suppose I could go out on a limb and include the airborne microbials in this particular ecosystem.  For the time being though, the scope of my focus is on those creatures that don’t require magnification to see.  Let’s talk a little about the aerosphere.  The aerosphere is located within and slightly above the planetary boundary layer,(PBL) of our atmosphere.  The PBL is the part of the atmosphere that is the lowest part of the troposphere which is influenced by frictional forces such as the earths surface, buildings, trees, hills, you get the idea.

We at Berkshire Community College have had the privilege of hosting nesting colonies of both tree swallows and cliff swallows on our main campus.  Tree swallows and cliff swallows are both aerial insectivores, which means they capture prey insects while in flight. Their technique is known as “hawking”.

We will begin our journey with a synopsis of the 2020 cliff swallow nesting season and then a brief summary of the 2020 Tree Swallow nesting season.  At this early stage of the development of this blog, I thought it would be advantageous to address my strong tendencies to go off on random tangents. So topics may slide a little off center, but in my world it is all related.  It is my hope that the content of this blog may somehow mitigate your latest attack of insomnia.