July 17, 2009
A couple months ago a new couple moved in up here on the fourth floor.
Those are barn swallows, and they built their nest on the emergency sprinkler head. You can see one's head and the other's tail poking out. Now, barn swallows are good to have around because they pick off mosquitoes out of the air. Anything whose life involves taking those little bloodsuckers out is a friend of mine.
As happens, after a while baby birds made an appearance. Once they started poking their heads out of the nest I decided to get a picture of them.
Then something (or someone) knocked out half of the nest. The baby birds were kind of huddled up in a pile when I got home from work one day. A neighbor called animal control and was told:
- The thing about mother birds abandoning the baby birds if a human touches them is BS
- If they're placed in something enclosed near the nest the parents will keep feeding them
So the birds have been living in a cardboard box near where the nest was.
And that's where things stand now. Ginger hasn't shown much interest in them, which is odd to me since she'll about pull my arm of chasing a robin. But when she sniffed at the box Tuesday morning one of the little suckers took off! So, apparently they have their flight feathers now. Startled me, and Ginger jumped about three feet backwards.
I'm thinking she'll give the box a wide berth from now on.
