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-webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hi all,<div>& This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --Boundary_(ID_+XP1LAqx5FaSAtuRwtY0qw) Content-type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT The aerial contests Tree Swallows have over feathers are indeed really neat to watch. An undergrad at Cornell did a really nice study of the behaviour, available here. Previous work had shown that nests with more feathers do better, probably mainly because they keep the eggs and nestlings warmer. Feathers are hard to come by (albeit not for the swallows in the valley near all those poultry farms), so competition for them can be intense. .......................... Wonderful!! Thanks Andrew. I should print that off and put it in my bird book. The male arrived one day after the swallows had come back (after choosing the nest house, they leave for about a week, I think). He had a couple big white cup shaped feathers and tried to put them on the top of the flag pole. The woodpeckers have pounded it to irregular shapes. It came up windy and he had a dickens of a time and eventually lost them. I saw them on the grass. I assume the same bird was also placing grasses up there and holding them. Maybe he was stockpiling nesting supplies? He dropped those as well and I did see her picking them up. I never did find the feathers so it will be interesting to see what we find in the house once they leave. I hope this nest has success. There are babies in there now as momma is doing a lot of flying in and out.....he is too. We put up a second house on the top of the flag pole facing away from the first thinking maybe the first was not acceptable any more although it seemed sound and cleaned. The first house is occupied, not the second. http://MargMillard.ca --Boundary_(ID_+XP1LAqx5FaSAtuRwtY0qw) Content-type: text/html; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.17063" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2> <DIV>The aerial contests Tree Swallows have over feathers are indeed really neat to watch. An undergrad at Cornell did a really nice study of the behaviour, available <A href="http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/7857">here</A>. Previous work had shown that nests with more feathers do better, probably mainly because they keep the eggs and nestlings warmer. Feathers are hard to come by (albeit not for the swallows in the valley near all those poultry farms), so competition for them can be intense.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>..........................</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Wonderful!! Thanks Andrew. I should print that off and put it in my bird book.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> The male arrived one day after the swallows had come back (after choosing the nest house, they leave for about a week, I think). He had a couple big white cup shaped feathers and tried to put them on the top of the flag pole. The woodpeckers have pounded it to irregular shapes. It came up windy and he had a dickens of a time and eventually lost them. I saw them on the grass. I assume the same bird was also placing grasses up there and holding them. Maybe he was stockpiling nesting supplies? He dropped those as well and I did see her picking them up. I never did find the feathers so it will be interesting to see what we find in the house once they leave. I hope this nest has success. There are babies in there now as momma is doing a lot of flying in and out.....he is too. </DIV> <DIV>We put up a second house on the top of the flag pole facing away from the first thinking maybe the first was not acceptable any more although it seemed sound and cleaned. The first house is occupied, not the second. </DIV></FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><A href="http://MargMillard.ca">http://MargMillard.ca</A></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML> --Boundary_(ID_+XP1LAqx5FaSAtuRwtY0qw)--
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