The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. 

We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns spinning around us.

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.

The Swallows were late arriving this spring. I worried they had arrived and left because of the two cats I now house in the barn loft. But the Swallows did come and have acclimated to the cats by no longer flying up into the loft, and of course abandoned the nests built up there. That’s just as well as the nests up there were accessible for blacksnakes, so they never successfully produced any surviving young Swallows. As a matter of fact when I went up to feed the cats 3 days ago Pepper, the female cat, alerted me to the presence of a blacksnake up against the rear wall! She refused to eat until totally convinced I had seen that snake.

So, you can see the Swallows that live in my barn face what I would call extreme challenges, but they persist and have been successful for over a decade now. I love my Swallows and know they have accepted me as a fixture in their world. They follow me clear up to the upper barn at chore time, flying around in front of the barn while I do the feeding, or wait outside on the power line until I head back down to the main barn to finish up there. Then they fly in and out and around the barn while I finish up my work, sometimes perching as close as they can get to wherever I am. It seems they want to know exactly what I am doing. They also follow me around the fields when I am mowing, circling the tractor at alarmingly close range as they pick off the multitudes of insects I disturb. My Swallow group this year is diminished to a core of about a dozen birds, down from double that in some years past. By fall that total would be doubled again to 48-50 or so birds, not counting the visitors who drop in. Early this spring there was a pair of gray Rough Wing Swallows who seemed anxious to claim a nest in the front stall of the main barn. 

They moved on to another location to nest but still return to hunt corral bug bounty with the resident Barn Swallows. We also get visits from Tree Swallows from time to time, and Bank (or Cliff?) Swallows which nest under the bridge over the river about half a mile upstream. 

That is the background you need to know about Swallows at Appy Trails. This diary is a sequential experience of the annual processes these wonderful birds accomplish during their stay from spring into fall. Today we will examine a portion of that stay, focusing on the early stages of nesting and raising their young. It is an impossible task to show you everything I see. I may get from 35-100 pics any given day and most of them offer something very interesting to see. Constraints of a diary don’t allow for such an extensive look, so I have to pick and choose what seems like a few to post. That is like showing only the trailer for the movie. Such is modern life.

There are 4 Swallows in particular that I have become close to. They are Main Papa, Main Mama, Crazy Bird, and recently Miss Elegante. Crazy Bird is an unusual individual and one of my life heroes. She is colored more like a male and allows nothing and no one access to her nest once her eggs hatch. She is the most prolific and successful hunter I have ever seen, regardless of species. I once sat for an entire hour to count the trips she made outside the barn to catch food for her youngsters, then divided the number trips into the hour period I watched. I was astonished to discover she averaged a round trip every twelve seconds! That seems like an impossible feat to me and may have been a special insect hatch or something of that nature, but she continues an amazingly hectic pace to this day. In my opinion Crazy Bird is super hero material., but she is very aloof and shy. Are you ready to get acquainted with my birds? I’ll take the silence for a “YES”.

You see Main Papa and Main Mama in the lead photo the moment after their mating ceremony was consumated. 

The four nests utilized by Main Mama and Crazy Bird are located at the east end/rear of the barn over the birthing stall, which is the largest stall in the barn. It measures 12’ x 16’. All the other stalls in the barn are 12’ x 12’. The loft floor joists are 10’ from the floor.

Now the REAL work begins! That means a vibrant population of possessive Swallows aggressively on the wing to feed and protect eight voracious baby appetites, which leads to an immediate evacuation of birds at my feeders. 

Finches, Titmouse, Chickadees, Cardinals, Woodpeckers, Nuthatches (to name a few) are all gone somewhere else. That somewhere else isn’t far way, just not within the ‘safe zone’ established around the main barn by the Swallows, now that the Swallow parents and all their helpers are on the prod. So that leaves us with our Swallows to keep track of. But, that is plenty to keep us busy!

Feeding all those babies is a full time job and Main Mama and Crazy Bird keep busy at it. 

When chores are done Mama takes a much needed break on the ‘porch’.

And so it goes, rinse and repeat. A similar scene is taking place in nest #2, except Crazy Bird does almost all the work on her own. I have noticed Main Papa feeding babes in her nest on occasion. That pretty much covers the Swallow baby raising sequence up to this point, except that now there are additional nests (#3 and #4) starting the way these two began a week and a half ago. Nest #5 up at the upper barn also has four freshly hatched babies in it.

Meet Miss Elegante, young mama to be at nest #3. 

That’s it? Yep, isn’t that what show stoppers are for?  If all these babies start learning to fly at the same time my place will be a packed out madhouse of aerial activity. As if it isn’t already.

But, what about Swallow BIFs, the great bird photo challenge? I must admit that my Swallows have mostly been outwitting me on the BIF scorecard. I’m looking for something along the lines of what you see in the lead photo, and that has not happened yet. But, I’m getting closer every day and have upgraded the pics below four times so far. Regardless, we’ll fly together into the comment section with the following...

We discuss what we see in each Bucket.

We value all observations, as we ponder life’s cycles.

Now it’s your turn.

Please comment  about your own natural area, and include photos if possible.  We love photos!

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