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Feed me, feed me!

16 years ago

DH had just mowed the front field and the swallows were having a field day catching bugs to feed their young. We enjoyed watching both parents (I think!) come in and take turns feeding. The damage to the front of the birdhouse was caused during a bad thunderstorm we had. A branch from a nearby tree came down and hit the front of the house. Marg

{{!gwi}}

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Comments (5)

claireplymouth z6b coastal MA
16 years ago
Insatiable little bird! You can understand why the parents get that desperate look after a week or two.

Thanks for the delightful photo,
Claire
lisa11310
16 years ago
Hi there! We have "typed" before. Thats a great pic of your babies. I have 5 TRES that should be fledging in 4-6 days. They are in my nest cam box. I beg you once again to go to the Sialis.org website and read up on the cavity nesting birds and how to keep them safe. I know you said you have had many brids fledge from your boxes but it is just a matter of time till a preditor gets a bunch of babies and maybe even the parents. Boxes on fences are NOT safe. I know you love your birds so take the time to read please!
www.sialis.org
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If you wait until next week, IÂll take you to the Kutztown Folk Festival here in eastern PA, where youÂll be able to sample a huge variety of PA Dutch specialties all in one place (link below) and be tempted to take home one of the 2000+ locally made quilts on display. Some of your choices will include chicken pot pie, schnitz un knepp (ham cooked with dried apples and dumplings), Lebanon bologna (a type of summer sausage) sandwiches, potato cakes, sausage and pepper sandwiches, shoofly, cherry crumb or other crumb-topped fruit pies, corn pie, fried scrapple and/or corn meal mush, roast ox, and pickles and preserves of many varieties. On the way home, weÂll stop at one of the farmersÂ markets for thinly sliced dried beef, applewood smoked bacon and ham, Lodi apples, Uncle HenryÂs hard pretzels, any one of a dozen varieties of potato chips still fried in lard, sticky buns, chip steak, freshly picked corn, untrimmed celery, pickled eggs and red beets, pot pie noodles, whoopie pies and Moravian sugar cakes. I confess that I wonÂt feel much like cooking dinner since IÂll be tired from volunteering at the festival. We can go out for dinner at any one of a score of diners or 100+ year old still-operating village hotels/taverns, where itÂs possible that some of the nightly specials may be stuffed beef heart with gravy or pig stomach stuffed with potatoes, onions, smoked and fresh sausage. YouÂll have to remember that many of the vegetables or items like steamed clams will be served with addiction-inducing browned butter. Yuengling beer will be on tap everywhere but you can also have prize-winning Chambourcin wine from one of the Lehigh ValleyÂs vineyards. Here is a link that might be useful: Kutztown PA German Folk Festival
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Pussy willow is one of the earliest pollen sources, but keep in mind that it is a small shrub. Easy to get plants, though; just cut small branches & root them in water. They grow quickly & will begin blooming in a couple years. Grape hyacinth is a good early nectar source, honey bees are swarming on mine when in bloom. They multiply quickly into clumps, and will multiply even more rapidly if divided. Malva sylvestris "Zebrina" is an annual flowering mallow, related to hollyhocks. It will bloom continuously from early Summer to late Fall. What makes this flower special is that it will usually survive the first frost or two, and is a good pollen source when most other flowers are done for the year. I plant it freely throughout my vegetable garden, honeybees will feed on them until a hard freeze... probably the last thing they feed on. It volunteers about as easily as its wild mallow cousins. Surprisingly, another good late-flowering bee plant is garlic chives... so they double as edible landscaping. The plants flower in August/September here, and bloom for several weeks. They are perennial, and multiply quickly to form clumps... but can be invasive, so are best located in a place of their own, where they can run freely. Be sure to dead head the flower stalks before the seeds mature.
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starlinka
16 years ago
The house itself is not very safe - The hole is to low and the nest is to high. Its easy for predators and other birds to reach the babies. They could also fall out. It don't look like the house can be opened and cleaned, and I don't think it ever was because the nest is to high (most likely it is on top of an old nests).
lisa11310
16 years ago
Good point Alexandras, seeing my TRES at age 15 days and still not peeking, that baby in the pic is much younger and the nest must be very near the hole. Marg, please hear our warnings. Your houses are not safe. Rats, Squirrels, Owls, Cats,Chipmunks, Snakes,Racoons,Ants,many many things could kill those babies in a flash. There are easy inexpensive ways to keep most preditors away. Please consider doing what is best for your birds!
dzyg
16 years ago
Yep, I totally agree with Lisa and starlinka, that is the perfect happy meal for predators. Your beautiful birds you love to watch would make such an easy meal for predators. Please go to sialis.org and find how to properly mount nestboxes and the proper nestboxes to offer, plus why you need to clean out the nestboxes after every nesting. Good luck, I hope the fledglings find their way into the skies and not into some cat/racoon/snakes stomach! Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't.

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