This is a repost from 2007, but what the heck. I'm going through my LJ photos for the bird class at school and moving them to Flickr.

Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) Feeding its Fledglings


Fremont, Seattle
July, 2007

For the two summers we lived in Fremont, a pair of tree swallows set up a nest in a pipe. The pipe happened to be across from our kitchen window. We were able to watch the pair nest, the female brood, and then both adults feed the young.

We never saw the young leave the nest, they just disappeared one day.

I took this by setting up my camera on a tripod and getting focus and exposure set. The bird flew by every ten minutes or so, and the nestlings gave a warning by getting more agitated as the parent approached. The camera was set to burst, so it would capture a few frames.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology page on tree swallows.

Wikipedia article about tree swallows

Animal Diversity Web on Tree Swallows

If you search on "tree swallow swarm" on YouTube, you can find several videos of varying quality of flocks preparing for night roosts in their winter feeding grounds. Here's one.

There's a tree swallow nest in a pipe we can see from our kitchen. Over the previous weeks we've seen the adult swallows come and go, and now we can hear the chicks peeping for their food. The parent swallow has just fed the chick and is leaving again.

Fremont, Seattle
July, 2007