FLYday - Barn Swallows

Barn swallows in flight and feeding fledglings while on the wing.

FLYday is an homage to what our feathered friends so best, fly.

"Waiter! There's A Fly In My Soup!" - Barn Swallows Feeding Young

These are Barn swallows. I took these photographs in Phippsburg while sitting in my car. I could have watched them all day, but did not. I realized that sitting on the side of the road, though not  talking on a cell phone made me look like a stalker or a cat burglar casing homes. I didn't even have a cell phone with me, nor lunch, nor anything else that could explain what I was doing had I been asked. I only had a suspicious looking camera with a long lens and a couple of waterproof field notebooks. All together, it was an assemblage of possibly circumstantial looking evidence that did not look good for me. So, I moved on.

     The maneuverability of the adult birds in flight was spectacular. Barn swallows don't fly all that fast, only about twenty miles an hour. But, they can dip, turn, dive and spin to catch insects in midair. About seventy percent of what they eat is big flies as seen in the bottom photos. They do eat other insects and will pick ants from the ground, too. I have photographed Barn swallows before and written about them, as well (in the previous post about them I had mentioned Michael Jackson, too. According to some readers, that would be another tick against me in the negative column for a jury). Their grace and socialness fascinate me. I have read that they practice mutualism with osprey. I've never seen this, but apparently they will build their nests under that of an osprey taking advantage of the bigger birds protection of their own nest from other birds of prey, like eagles, owls and falcons. The osprey benefits by the swallows alarm calls when there are predators nearby. I am guessing that the flies that accumulate near an osprey's nest from rotting fish parts are attractive to the Barn swallows, too. A little house keeping seems like a good trade for protection from gangsters on the block!

    Barn swallows nest twice a summer. Their clutch success rate (sounds like points a woman gets for buying a really good handbag!) is about 80% unless it has been a cold, rainy year. This keeps the insect counts down and thus, the food availability. That happened in Maine last year when June had record breaking precipitation. Anecdotally (I don't know if ornithology data supported this), people reported fewer swallow chicks.  The chicks fledge about twenty days after hatching. Then, after they have left the nest, they are fed for about a week by the parents. Sometimes, the first brood will assist in feeding of the second! Both parents feed the young. Lady Barn swallows like guys with longer tail streamers (the tail feathers on either side of the notch). If a male is missing his tail, he may be a helper assisting in nest building and feeding rather than breeding. Now is that cordial or what?  

"Cool move, Mom!"

"Hey! What about me? That one looks really juicy!"

Thanks to  wikipedia for some of the information.

TREE SWALLOWS Raising Younguns

      These TREE SWALLOWS reside in a Blue Bird box. Tree swallows are famous for nesting in those boxes. Sometimes, when they first start checking out the boxes as potential homes in the spring, their brilliant blue-black feathers dupe the hopeful into thinking that they see an Eastern Bluebird.They are not a disappointment, though.
     Tree Swallows are aggressively protective of their nests and will dive bomb approaching threats. This includes cats, raccoons, and in this case, me. An Apricot tree provided enough cover to get these photos. I had to hold very still as any movement riled up the birds. The mosquitoes were awful which made that torturous as I had to let them bite me.
     The Barn swallows I posted earlier feed their young partially digested pellets of insects which they regurgitate into their youngster's throats. Tree swallows differ in that they feed the young whole insects. You can see this in the last photo.
     I saw at least two chicks in the box. There were probably more. They usually have 4-6. Males and females both take care of the chicks. Like the Barn swallows, they sometimes nest twice a year. The chicks in these photos are just about to be thrown out of the house. As my father used to say when we left home, "Write when you get work!"

Barn Swallows Versus Michael Jackson

     The Barn Swallow is the national emblem of Estonia. Their currency bears an image of a swallow. The Estonians were ahead of the curve on that, in my opinion. I wish our money had that kind of image, rather than those rusty old presidents whose hair makes them all look like madmen. When I’m commissioned to redo our currency, I’ll put these hungry mouths of Barn Swallow chicks in an egg-like oval in the middle of each bill. Swallows would also be good representatives on our currency as the most widespread swallow in the world, much like our influence, good or bad. For that matter, Michael Jackson should be on our money. Toss up: Barn Swallows or Michael Jackson. If a pool of school children was chosen from around the world, then asked to identify a Barn Swallow or Michael Jackson, which do you suppose they’d be most likely to recognize?
    Perhaps I could consolidate the two: a Barn Swallow in flight, harnessed and trailing Michael Jackson through the sky. Throw in a little Shakespeare, “True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings,” and you’ve got yourself a world class devolving dollar bill.
     All Barn Swallows migrate, some far as Argentina and South Africa. Swallow tattoos are a tradition amongst sailors symbolizing long journeys and safe returns. A sailor gets his first tattoo after traveling 5,000 nautical miles. These Barn Swallows occupy a friend’s barn here in Phippsburg. There are ten nests, each one with 4-5 chicks. They usually lay twice in a summer, so that’s about 100 baby swallows from that barn each year. The success rate of the broods is about 75%. That’s a lot of swallows! Sitting in the barn, watching them zoom in and out feeding their chicks practically requires an umbrella. The barn owner has every square inch draped with plastic and paper, a sort of canvas for the splatter, like a Jackson Pollock painting without the talent.
   Their mud pellet nests are repaired and reused for 10-15 years, but have been documented to have been used for 48 years! That’s a dilemma for a barn owner. The nests could be destroyed, forcing the swallows to rebuild. After all, what did Barn swallows do before barns? They nested in more precarious places, such as overhangs on cliffs. In the Northeast, they nest under Osprey nests. It’s a reciprocal arrangement where the birds of prey drive away other predatory birds while the swallows gobble up the flies accumulating in the rotten fish scraps in the Osprey nest. Barn swallows have thrived in our company and our safe structures for their nests. We also tolerate these flying guano machines for their fine dining on flying insects. Swallows have always been one of my favorite birds. Their zooming flight is like my mind - an elegant, dark thing tearing through a dim barn, resulting in a lot of crap.