first feather added

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Saturday was a very quiet day with nothing added to the nest, the two Swallows seemed to be away for most of the day, always a worry when they do that - has something happened to them, have they abandoned the nest.

Then Sunday they were back and we were regularly treated throughout the day to the spectacular of the pre mating flying extravaganza; they will chase each other with amazing speed and agility, the lead bird trying to out manoeuvre the other with high speed, sudden turns, and extremely close passes between the house and car - and the whole time its mate will keep only a few inches behind. I presume its the female testing to see if the male is good enough to farther her children!

And Monday we have the first egg, I would guess we will have another 3 or 4 eggs over the next 3 or 4 days then she will start to sit. Hopefully I will get to see a bit more of there stunning flying acrobatics.


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That's incredible. Such a pretty egg too.

Thanks for posting!

Four eggs laid and now sitting - we had an egg laid on mon, tue, thur and friday - then it would appear she has started to sit saturday afternoon.

four eggs is very normal for swallows, occasionally there will be 3 or 5 eggs, and once I observed 6 (I have watched thirty something nests now)

It would appear that they have added a lot more feathers during the egg laying period, but have not added any more mud or straw!


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Thanks for the update.

Beautiful nest.
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I wonder about the white feathers and what bird they came from?

Do they use the all white feathers each time they nest?

Lara, some birds pluck their own feathers for nest lining. But I don't know if swallows do that. There is typically also a post-nuptial moult of many types of birds. And perhaps this is a source of some feathers too.

They may find seagull or duck feathers too.
Here is an interesting photo of hand offering to a swallow of feathers for her nest!


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And a video of hand picking feathers:

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and this from feathers on the ground:

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I am encouraged by this video. We often find many white feathers upNorth on the shore. I am going to gather these smaller ones dropped by the gulls and geese, bring them back and put them in
my cotton dispenser and see what happens next spring.
We used to have many swallows nesting under the tunnels along our creek...but I haven't seen them lately.
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wow, very interesting.
Thanks for posting those.

I must say that swallows look really pretty in flight.

They are really FAST too. We used to have them all the time, and they lived under the bridges along with creek where the roads go over them...but then there was huge construction on a new sewer system and big machines scared them away.

You could stand in the street, and they would be zooming overhead eating bugs like mosquitoes etc. Our tree cover is very high (old oaks), so the street was like a tunnel for them. They remind me of the bats upNorth, which are also very fast when they swoop down to catch mosquitoes. Only the bats come closer to your head than the swallows do.
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This is a woods where we live...a little oasis of woods in a busy city. I wonder how the small feathers would do here. Not much in the way of sources available like on farmlands etc.
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Good question and I don't really know - Mrs D is correct that some birds pluck some of their own feathers however I don't think Swallows do this, I have seen them flying back to the nest carrying feathers which sort of suggests they are sourcing them rather than using their own. (presumably if they were using their own they would do so at the nest site ?)

Why white? I have looked at some old nests in the garage and some old photographs from previous years and indeed the feathers used are predominately white, my only guess for this may be white feathers are easier to find, whilst out with the dog this week I have taken notice of feathers I have spotted lying on the ground and they have virtually all been white, I guess the more camouflaged ones are just to difficult to see.

They are wonderful flyers, skilful enough to snatch insects out of the air. I love to watch them over parks and playing fields, they fly on e to two feet above the grass feeding on insects that have been disturbed by people walking over the grass.

You must have different species of bats to us, ours never come close - I also like watching bats, at this time of year we get a good few in the twilight.