Friday, June 24, 2011

Sweetbriar Nature Center has several bluebird boxes in the open fields. Unfortunately, we don’t get many bluebirds. Or any, to be more precise. The boxes are still put to good use by other species.

This female Tree Swallow is raising her brood in one. She doesn’t care that the box is for bluebirds. She’s not proud. What she is is hot. That’s why she’s gaping in the lower pic. Three o’clock in the afternoon inside a 6x6x12 oven in the open sun and you’d be gasping for a breeze at the window too. Not to mention her pretty-boy mate. Oh sure, he’s handy with the occasional feeding but he barely helped build the nest and he never takes a turn at sitting the kids. He’s perched on a shady branch and singing. Singing. Well, singing don’t feed the brood and it sure as heckfire doesn’t get her out of that box and into a nice cool grove of trees, now does it? Typical male behavior. Her mother told her it would be like this and her mother was right. Those Tree Swallows are all the same. All woo and no work. JK