Monday, June 20, 2011

I Ask You: Do mud nesting sites crumble and fall?

Recently I spotted barn swallows (aka mud swallows) feeding young birds safely housed in mud nests under Riverside Drive near downtown London.


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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