After I parked my bicycle on the path out of Harris Park (directly under the roadway) I enjoyed photographing the antics of the busy, determined parents.
["Somebody is there but won't sit up for me": photos by GH]
Yesterday I returned to another similar nesting site - under the lone bridge on Hunter Crossley Line (the road begins 2 miles south of Belmont and runs east to Imperial Line) - and all I found were the remains of the many footprints of former mud homes.
(This morning I reviewed past photos to estimate how many homes had been under the bridge in previous years. Easily, there had been dozens).
["In June, 2008 dozens of homes were clumped together. Where are they now?"]
I wondered, where have the birds gone?
Perhaps they move around because of an increase in predators or decrease in food supply. I saw many swallows yesterday, so their population appears healthy, and one set of parents was feeding young in a mud house attached to the wall of a productive birdhouse workshop in Courtland. (Highway 3, a few km. east of Tillsonburg).
Swallows like man-made houses too, but if mud is plentiful, they make sturdy houses that must come - I’m guessing - with some sort of expiry date.
Note - the top photo shows one inhabited mud house built atop a vacant one.
So, I ask you, do swallows not trust the veracity of old mud? Does the mud dry out and fall off the cement or steel girder after a year or two?
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