Jim’s Blog

 
Knowing that the gestation period of barn swallows is 60 days, and the fact that we saw the birds mating on the 4th and 6th of May, it is about time for some eggs to appear in the nest. I just climbed up a ladder with a camera and mirror and snapped this photo of inside the nest. – No eggs yet, but the nest looks very cozy with all the soft feathers.
 

 
 
I recently put together a new PC. Before building a new PC, I try to make my component list as close to state-of-the-art as I can afford. Then hopefully it will still be current technology two years into the future.
The components I chose:

• AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2GHz Socket AM3 processor
• Asus M4A79T Deluxe Motherboard
• CoolerMaster 690 Case
• Patriot 4 GB DDR3 1333 MHz DRAM
• EVGA nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ Graphics Card
• Fedora 11 x86_64 O/S

 
7 p.m.: We just noticed a new baby cottontail eating grass in the back yard. He is so tiny that when he has his head down eating, all you can see is the tips of his ears above the grass. I waited until he looked up to snap this shot. You can also see here that our catnip is flowering, and will soon be going to seed.
 
 

 
 
It’s now 8:10pm, almost dark, and here is the little guy on the patio right up by the back door. There was not quite enough light to get a good photo without moving the camera and blurring the image.
 
 
 

 
 
The birds out back are providing hours of interest from our six cats. In this photo, our cat “Chip” is intently watching the barn swallow on the nest outside the window. It’s a good thing that these cats of ours are indoor-only cats, good for the birds and little critters, that is.
 
 
 

I noticed a third barn swallow around the back patio a few days ago. So, knowing that swallows live in colonies, I put up four additional shelves 3 days ago. Ever since, the swallow pair has been roosting over-night on the new shelf seen on the left of the left photo below. But, I haven’t seen the third swallow again during the last 3 days.

 
Our gardenia bush is really loaded with blossoms this year. This past winter the frost got to the plant and killed off some of the outer branches. When I went to prune back the dead growth, I saw the plant was covered with flower buds. So, I decided to wait until after the plant flowered before doing my pruning for the year. The flowers are really fragrant!
 
 

The catnip by the back patio is really growing tall. It’s now up to the top of the bird bath. It looks like it is getting ready to bloom. Every year for the past three years, I have let it flower, go to seed, and then in the winter mow it down to the ground. Then, it comes back the following year. This all started from 6 plants that I bought a few years ago. If it looks like mint, that’s because catnip is a member of the mint family of plants. If you look at the photo in my April 20th entry, you can see what a difference a month has made in the catnip growth.

Today marks one month that the barn swallows have been working on their nest. So far, I have not seen them spend the night here at the nest. I have no idea where they are spending their nights.  They have spent more than one rain storm huddled up around or in the nest but have not yet spent the night.  I have seen the female sitting in the nest for a while the last two days, so I was thinking maybe there was an egg there.  But, they are gone again this evening, so I guess there’s no egg in the nest.

My research led me to the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology Animal Diversity Web site. Here I found, “They usually raise two broods of chicks each summer. Both birds of a pair make the nest. They build the shell of mud, and line it with grass and feathers. The female lays 3 to 7 eggs (average 5). Both parents incubate the eggs, which hatch in 13 to 15 days… The nestlings remain in the nest for about 20 days before fledging… The parents continue to care for the chicks for up to a week after fledging, feeding them and leading them back to the nest to sleep. By two weeks after fledging, the barn swallow chicks have dispersed and often travel widely to other barn swallow colonies. Young barn swallows are able to breed in the first breeding season after they have hatched.”

Male Barn Swallow 1

Male Barn Swallow 2

Two Days ago (May 4th) and again today I saw both birds in the nest, one on top of the other one. So hopefully, there will be some eggs in the nest before long. I’ll have to do some research to see how long it takes for their eggs to hatch.