An image on the Daily Images section of barganews this morning maybe needs some text to go with it. Swallows nest each year on my terrace in Barga Vecchia. It is always one of the pleasures in spring watching them arrive and go about the business of preparing their nests and hatching their young. During the summer we get to see the young swooping noisily around the house and then soon after, the bitter sweet melancholy bit where they will sit in line on some of the wires strung through Barga Vecchia and then one morning they will all just disappear again.The cycle repeats itself each year and never failing to amaze me.
That is until this morning -- something is not right with the conditions and so they have pushed five eggs out of the nest and smashed them on terracotta tiles below. Do they know something that we don’t? Could it be that the signs are already there for them to read and they know that there will not be enough food to raise their young this year and so drastic conditions mean drastic measures ?
Whatever, it is not a good sign but then again, yes the cycle does carry on and depending where you are on the food chain -- it is business as usual.
The ants this morning took only a few minutes to find an unexpected food supply.
swallows ready to migrate for the winter from Barga
young swallows learning to fly
busy ants in Barga 2006
Maybe it’s eco-paranoia on my part, but the swallows who usually cavort around my home in the centro storico seem far, far less numerous this year. Has anyone else noted this, or the nest-clearing phenomenon described by our editor?
There are normally two broods, with the original nest being reused for the second brood and being repaired and reused in subsequent years. Hatching success is 90% and the fledging survival rate is 70–90%. Average mortality is 70–80% in the first year and 40–70% for the adult. Although the record age is more than 11 years, most survive less than four years. – source – Turner, Angela K; Rose, Chris (1989). Swallows & martins: an identification guide and handbook. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-51174-7. p164–169
probabilmente la madre era talmente preoccupata dalla questione sindaco fasciatricolore destra sinistra (vedi articolo) che ha preferito non sottoporre i suoi figli ad una vita nel dubbio.
Bravo, Dr. Who! 😉
Perhaps something threatened the nest…cat on a hot tile roof…
E’ stata frettolosa. la mia accurata e costante ricerca scioglierà presto ogni dubbio…