After the Eagles and Hawks depart in mid-spring they are replaced by Vultures and the lords of the sky. The lords of the summer sky are none other than Barn Swallows, in company of their relatives who are Swallows by another name. All Swallows have common traits and share some behavioral traits, but Barn Swallows are gifted with aerial abilities that are to the extreme. Though a very small bird there is no other bird that can fly like Barn Swallows can fly.
THE DAILY BUCKET IS A NATURE REFUGE. WE AMICABLY DISCUSS ANIMALS, WEATHER, CLIMATE, SOIL, PLANTS, WATERS AND NOTE LIFE’S PATTERNS.
WE INVITE YOU TO NOTE WHAT YOU ARE SEEING AROUND YOU IN YOUR OWN PART OF THE WORLD, AND TO SHARE YOUR OBSERVATIONS IN THE COMMENTS BELOW.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE PURPOSE AND HISTORY OF THE DAILY BUCKET FEATURE, CHECK OUT THIS DIARY: DAILY BUCKET PHENOLOGY: 11 YEARS OF RECORDING EARTH'S VITAL SIGNS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOODS
Today’s Bucket will be one intended to be a fun version of sequences highlighting some behavioral traits of Barn Swallows.
I live in the FLINT HILLS of Kansas and my ranch is shared by a spectacular family group of Barn Swallows. If memory serves they established residence here about 2010 and have been back every year since. I have the luxury of being able to exit my cabin door and immediately be in sight of flying Swallows. They even come to the house and fly around under the deck roof where I often sit. Since their headquarters is in my main barn (about 70 feet from my house), which is central to all the infrastructure of this place, they frequent all areas surrounding the barn. I estimate they cover at least 200 miles in the air every day in pursuit of insects. It has been stated each Swallow will catch and consume up to 850 insects every day! Considering the Swallow population on and around my place numbers in the hundreds...that’s a whole lot of bugs! A whole lot of bugs being chased by a whole lot of Swallows present a whole lot of photo opportunities. That’s a good thing because Swallows in flight are one of the most difficult avian subjects to photograph. But, since persistence pays dividends, even a relative beginner like me can accumulate a commendable collection. Attempting to continually improve the quality included in that collection has become an obsession to me, a SWALLOW OBSESSION. Read about it here ( www.dailykos.com/...) or especially here (www.dailykos.com/… ). Those contain the bar setters I’m trying to better this year.
I keep my Swallow photos for the current year in four folders. They are labeled TS (Top Shelf), CBNC (Close But No Cigar), AM (Appy Miracle), and a general Swallows 2023 folder. I have been diligent this year and already have a Swallows 2023-2 folder! The Appy Miracle folder is for pics I manage to get of flying swallows in front of trees or foliage which almost always steals camera focus, but in this case I got the bird in focus. As I get new photos (already took more than 400 Swallow pics this past week) I put them in the appropriate folder, but each of the first two folders is considered full at 24 pics, which means rotating lesser pics to a new location downstream. It turns into lots of time.
Enough of the chatter, let’s get started on the fun stuff.
SEQUENCE #1
Are you as surprised as the bird was? I am, but it was a fun exercise all around so it’s all good. One side note is that some of the nests in my barn are lined with feathers like the one that was dropped. They are brown chicken feathers. The only chickens I know of within 2 miles of my place are white chickens and are in a fully enclosed hawk-proof enclosure, including the top. Just mentioned that as an example of how these birds get around and know about things we don’t.
The pics in this sequence are in my CBNC folder.
SEQUENCE #2
If you are going to catch 850 insects in a day you have to stay busy dawn to dark.
You can see the bird has a “barely got it” grasp on the bug. That grasp did not turn out to be sufficient. I didn’t see if the bird recaptured the bug as the action was at a furious speed and I lost the bird from viewfinder and focus. But it sure was fun while it lasted! I am curious as to the ID of the insect so I zoomed it to give you a shot at the ID. In that zoomable pic the bug appears to be seriously damaged, making me wonder if the bird found it unpalatable and spit it out. In any case this sure was a quick, but fun, session of Swallow BIFs for me. The pics in this sequence are temporarily in my TS folder.
SEQUENCE #3
It helps to practice on perched birds. Not only do you learn a lot about their behavior but you can get good BIF chances when they take off or when they come in to land. On this day the birds were on the line chatting.
Are we having fun yet?
If the Barn Swallows are getting the best of me I will go over to the river bridge and try my luck on the Cliff Swallows who live there. It’s kind of like having a cheat sheet for a big test. Cliff Swallows are bigger and not as fast as the Barnies, so it’s easier to bolster confidence by taking pics of them for practice. If conditions are good I can usually rip off 30-40 nice Cliff Swallow BIF shots in about 5 minutes at the bridge. Traffic is rarely a problem, which is a perk for living where I live.
OK, that was easier. Now I’m ready to go home and try harder on the Barnies!
It is only the beginning of June but I was slobber-knockered by a big surprise yesterday, 6/4/23. I learned I don’t have much time left to get up to speed for trying to get the magical SHINING MOMENT I am hoping for. Previously the Swallows have done their waterworks dipping in the heat of summer, July and August. But here we are in the early days of June and the birds have already begun to hone their dipping skills. Here is what I stumbled into yesterday…
These are actually just a start on the pot into which I hope to be adding ingredients until the end of summer. Here is the start of my Swallow dipping pot of goodies.
C’mon and jump in with me to catch the fever for getting that SHINING MOMENT.
It’s Swallow Obsession time again! Are you in?
UPDATE: As of 6/7 and 6/8 I have added some serious ingredients to my pot.
I’m all in, even though I muffed my chances at the two best waterworks displays today.