Sunday, June 3, 2012

New Neighbours!

We live in a new area and there is construction all around us. With construction, comes a great deal of dirt. There is dirt on the streets and piles of dirt everywhere. One day while on a walk I noticed some barn swallows start to dive for me and knew, from experience, that this meant that I was near a nest. So, after a quick chat with the birds and some observation, I figured out that they were digging  a hole in a pile of dirt to make a nest. 

A couple of days later, I noticed that there were many more birds. We took a walk over, after a rain storm, to take a closer look and realized that there were many barn swallows making this hill their home. Knowing that this isn't a good situation for the birds, because this is only a temporary hill that the builders will likely bulldoze soon, I decided that it was okay to get up close and disturb them. Maybe they will move to a more permanent residence.

Zoe was surprised and excited that she could get up close and look inside the holes. A couple of the adults were hiding inside and zoomed out, right by her head. They didn't come back to bother us so I am guessing that there still were no babies or eggs. Hopefully they moved out before they decided to lay their eggs so that their babies aren't harmed by the construction.

This is just a stark reminder of how humans affect the animals who live near us.

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