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The estuary — gated and degraded by decades of dairy farming — is home to at least 38 fish species, as well as red-legged frogs, bank swallows and waterfowl.

Four birds have been elusive: the hairy woodpecker, bank swallow, cliff swallow and northern rough-winged swallow.

The tree swallows and the bank swallows are pleasing, but they are much more local and restricted in their ranges than the barn-frequenters.

On the same day a bank swallow was feeding her little ones, a half dozen or so, which were ranged on a willow stem at the margin of the river.

Only a flight of bank swallows, disturbed by the footfalls of his horse, darted noisily from their nests under the south bridge abutment and scattered twenty ways in the sunshine.