Swallow report

It's Memorial Day Weekend, so I have a three-day weekend, which I am incredibly grateful for. Last week was a long, busy, stressful week, and I'm ready for a little break. I don't have any plans this weekend, other than shopping. And of course that's not any different from any weekend, except that I have more time to do it this weekend. I also have more time to clean things up around the house. Robovac is working as I type this.

I thought I'd give a baby swallow report. Those babies grow up so fast!!! Let's see. My last post and pictures were from the May 16th. The babies were probably just hatched, within a day or so. Today is the 30th and the little guys started flying on the 27th. So 10-12 days between hatching and flying. That's just incredible!

It turns out that there are four baby swallows in this brood rather than the three I first thought. The pictures in this post are a progression from the last post. The first one on the left above was taken on 5/21 and you can see they're already pretty well fledged five days after the first picture, although they still have some of the fuzzy, downy feathers sticking out in all directions. The next picture on the right was taken on 5/23, about four days before they started flying. At that point they were already looking pretty adult-like in color and size. And also for the most part doing a great job of hiding whenever I opened the door to try to take pictures. There really are four in that nest.

The last picture below was taken yesterday morning before the four of them left the nest for their daily excursions. They actually held still briefly for this shot. You can tell them from the adults when they're sitting still like this because they have yellow beaks. The adults have black beaks. In flight they're easy to tell apart because they still do a fair amount of clumsy fluttering, totally un-swallow-like. Plus their wing feathers and tail feathers are considerably shorter still. They don't yet have the noticeable scissor-tail the adults have.

They'll probably hang around and return to the nest every night now for a couple weeks, I guess until the baby swallows are more adept at flying and fending for themselves. Then they'll go on their way, and I'll be able to thoroughly clean my front porch. That's the only down-side to having them nest there . . . messy! But it's soooooo cool to get to watch them grow up. Totally worth the mess.

Anyway, just a short post today with a baby swallow report.

Swallows and peaches

What an interesting week it's been! It's even been "interesting" at work, but I'm totally not going to go there today. It's Sunday and it's currently pretty and cool outside, and I've mostly finished my Sunday chores even though it's only10:00 am-ish. So I'm in a good mood. No use ruining it by thinking about work.

Friday it rained quite a bit and it was supposed to rain all weekend. They even had flash flood warnings for the area (lakes are past full), but yesterday afternoon it cleared out and it's been gorgeous. Right now it's about 70 degrees and beautifully sunny, although I'm sure it will heat up as the day goes on and be muggy after the rain. Still, much as I like it like this, I wasn't unhappy to see the rain. The lakes may be full, but my yard needed the water. I actually watered the lawn Thursday because it was so dry.

One of the things that have made this an interesting week is the hatching of swallow babies. My baby swallows are so cute. You can see the tops of two little fuzzy heads in this picture. I've seen three little heads, and I'm pretty sure there are just the three of them in there. I took this shot through my glass front door so I wouldn't disturb them too much. The parents get kind of frantic even when I'm out front mowing the lawn, so I keep off the front porch as much as possible. In this picture you can also see my jerry-rigging to get that 'box' up there. Looking at it, it's really amazing that the swallows decided to come back and nest there. I just felt so bad about the siding closing off their little ledge that I had to try putting something up there. For whatever reason, it worked. I'll try to get more pictures as the little guys get bigger.

The other major event that happened this week was on Thursday. I took the day off to sit at home and wait for the insurance adjuster. I'm going to be having some repair work done on my roof. Anyway, about 7:30 am I looked out back, and guess what? A limb had snapped on my peach tree! And of course, it wasn't one of the dead limbs on the back side of the tree, but one of the live limbs, covered in small growing peaches! It's been really windy here this last week, so I imagine it was a combination of the wind and the weight of the peaches. So instead of sitting around and waiting on Thursday, I spent five hours cutting the limb down, along with the three major dead limbs from the back of the tree. Then I cut them all up into the size of pieces the trash guys will haul off, and bagged up all the foliage and baby peaches. Lest you think I whipped through this with a chain saw, I did it all with a hand saw. I don't own a chain saw. Anyway, I have a gap in the living side of the tree now, which you can kind of see in this picture. The limbs from the dead back side are now nicely cleared out. Interestingly, those three big limbs were full of carpenter ants. I don't know if they're responsible for the dead side of the tree, or they moved in when those limbs died. Anyway, it's significantly easier to mow under the peach tree now, which I know because I also mowed my lawn Thursday as long as I was outside doing yard work. The part of the tree that's living is doing well ... too many baby peaches, but it looks good.

The cats are continuing to enjoy being outside, although the black demon has put in a couple of appearances. Luckily, he hasn't appeared awhile they've been out there, so they continue to go out there and lounge or explore. They very helpfully laid on the patio and watched me work on Thursday while I was sawing and hacking.

So that was my interesting week.