Saturday, Saturday

The forecast is bad for tomorrow but if the BBC are true to form it won’t be nearly as bad as they suggest, my cue for setting the alarm.

After a 10 day interlude I needed to check my Swallow site out today: Maybe that is not as random as it suggests as I knew there would almost certainly be young Swallows ready for a ring. In fact after losing two broods to unknown but suspected predators, two other broods were of the right size for a ring today with primary feathers “IP” – just in pin, but emerging. So I ringed 3 in one nest where Molly the Border Collie kept intruders out and five in a nest in the black shed with the tiny, unobvious but secure entrance hole as around me adults and birds of the year tried to join in with bouts of feeding hungry young.

Swallow
Swallow

In the nest that fledged only 14 days ago, in fact the most secure and favoured nest site, an adult sat on 4 new eggs, these Swallows certainly don’t waste any time. In other nests I counted 14 eggs, some quite soft and ready for hatching, then in another nest, chicks too young to ring now but ready in four or five days.

Swallow

Back at home with the lure of peanuts I tried to interest the Great–spotted Woodpecker into spending time in the apple tree, but even as a youngster it is so wild and wary that it is a difficult task. Momentarily I got the bird to pose half way around the tree, not ideal but in the evening light it made for a pleasing picture, as did the Chaffinch and Collared Dove.

Great-spotted Woodpecker
Chaffinch
Collared Dove
I looked at http://www.xcweather.co.uk/ which suggests that Tuesday may be better for a ringing expedition. Here’s hoping.

Success and Failure

I went to check some outstanding Swallow nests at Hambleton and a single unfinished one at Out Rawcliffe. The weather has been so good that I am hoping for a bumper breeding season of Swallows.

Swallow
Swallow chicks

At Hambleton the earliest nest of the season was well on with a few of the biggest of the brood exercising their wings on the edge of the muddy construction as the parents busied themselves with bringing in food. A second pair had tiny young whereby I will go back in a day or two. A further nest I had doubts about has definitely been deserted at the egg stage and others are still at a similar phase, including one that was only lined with feathers last week. So in the overall total that latter nest will counts as a gain, at least at this stage.

Swallow chicks
Swallow chicks
Swallows
Swallows
Swallow

I checked a nest in an open fronted old garage and found it predated where a week ago there were five warm eggs indicating incubation. I suspect it was our old pal the Magpie as they do hang around the buildings to grab a meal from the chickens, the horses or the dogs. Of course I have no proof but I am afraid the Magpie’s reputation as a nest thief precedes it. When I checked the chicken shed where the door is left open all day, I was most upset to find another nest devoid of the young I was expecting to ring; there was no point in looking for the nest contents on the wooden floor already covered in chicken feathers from the shed dwellers. As one might expect it appears that the Swallows which nest in buildings where they gain access through a door or window ajar, or a hole in the building’s fabric or construction fare better than those that choose a more open location potentially open to predators.

I motored on to Out Rawcliffe where I checked in a secure building, one nest from 10 days ago to see the young large and ready to go, an obvious success again. At a second nest from where once again I expected to ring chicks from the 4 eggs of 10 days ago, the evidence of more predation lay on the floor, scattered feathers, nest contents and a single dead chick some three or four days old. A mammalian predator could not reach this nest, in the centre of a beam close up to a corrugated roof, but an avian one could as the tumbledown building has no doors or windows to keep them out. In this case I suspect a Little Owl, resident locally and a species known to take Swallow nestlings.

Naturally I will continue checking and monitoring these nests, the information gained for the BTO Nest Record Scheme is invaluable to the overall picture of what happens to our Swallows, the successful or the not so lucky. I wish more people would do nest records, not just for Swallows, but for any nesting species they come across during the course of their birding. And anyway my nest recording also helps me to get a few photographs.

Swallow

Barn Swallows

Barn Swallow is the correct name of course but here in the UK everyone still uses the everyday word of “Swallow” because we only have one really native swallow species, unlike the rest of the world e.g. North America where they need to distinguish between for instance Tree Swallow, Cliff Swallow and Rough-winged Swallow or Africa where there are several species of closely related swallows.

Barn Swallow
So I went to the smallholding at Hambleton where the Swallows use what aren’t exactly barns but simply untidy outbuildings that house chickens, horses, dogs, aviary birds and a collection of motorcycle bits and pieces in various states of disrepair.

The nest where I ringed six young on the 5th June still had the same six, but now well developed and ready to fledge in a few days more.

Swallow Chicks
Checking all the nests I found three of them with young at various stages of development, the just mentioned well grown brood, a nest with newly hatched, and a nest with 5 young about 5 or 6 days old that were large enough for ringing with their unique identifiers, X515384 to X515388. Of the remaining nests, five had complete clutches of eggs with a newly lined nest still awaiting eggs.

Swallow Chick
With the adults returning frequently to the nests I took the opportunity for more photographs. But with all the nests at various stages I will make many more visits before the end of the season when I guess I will not resist the temptation of taking yet more Barn Swallow pictures.

Swallow
Swallow