Baby Barn Swallows Born - By Risto Jäntti
Not only did I find today eggshell's on the barn floor under a
certain swallow nest, but the residents of the nest seemed to feed their chicks: they kept flying in and
out and after entering the nest they bent over it and "nodded" several times. From the eggshell
could be seen that they were quite certainly left after a hatching. The swallows really surprised
me, I could not have believed that there will already now be chicks when thinking of the coldness! I
took the eggshell's and put them in a matchbox in case you are interested in them. I could gather
more of them for you if you want. So far there have been no problems with predators but you never
know.
The weather has been cold: in the daytime 9 - 15 and at night
-4 - 7 deg C, that is night frost in the coldest nights. Lake Niinivesi warms up our microclimate a
bit so in our yard only on Tuesday night the temperature just shortly went under zero. The
strawberry farmers in the neighbourhood have been sprinkling their strawberry fields with water at night
to prevent the strawberry flowers from freezing and beeing destroyed. It is not easy to
understand but when water freezes on a plant, some warmth is released in the process, just enough not
to allow the plant to get frozen. The only thing is that you must continue spraying until the
temperature is clearly over zero. There are lots of strawberry farms in our
area.
Enjoy your warm winter (well, at least compared to our cold
summer).
First swallow chicks
ringed! 24-06-2010
Yesterday, on Wednesday, Janne came to us to ring barn
swallow chicks. This time we did not ring adults. We went through all possibly active
nests. We found altogether 12 first brood nests, that is only half of the amount of nesting
pairs in 2002, the super year of our swallows. Three nests had still eggs, one nest carried
newly-hatched chicks (too young to be ringed), three nests had 4 chicks, four nests 5 chicks and one
nest as many as 6 chicks. Altogether we were able to ring 38 chicks. Beforehand we thought
there will be maybe a couple of nests with chicks big enough, but we were surprised to find 7 such
nests. A barn swallow chick must be minimum 6 days old before it can be ringed, because a chick
less than six days old has the ankles too thick for ringing due to very active
metabolism.
Next time we will be ringing barn swallows in the beginning
of July and then we will put up mist nets in the barn for the adult swallows. I have already
noticed that many adults seem to be ringed. We are waiting for one of your swallows, the chances
are not big, but one of your rings would be a real bomb, wouldn't´t it!
Janne took pictures of swallow eggshell's with his fancy
camera, and I will send the pictures to you after having got them from Janne.
The temperature has been around 20 in the daytime,
ideal for the swallows and me; neither too hot nor cold.
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