Every year, our local blue bird boxes are taken over by tree swallows, which are very busy now feeding their families of four to seven fledglings.
Mom and Dad share the immense feeding and cleanup chores. (The parents incessantly deliver food to the big-mouthed youngsters and clean up after them by taking out their droppings.)
A pair of these fast-flying acrobats reportedly needs a daily diet of about 6,000 small insects – all caught in the air – to feed themselves and their fledglings. Extended periods of cold and rain (when small insects don’t fly) can have a devastating effect on the birds. Tree swallows not only eat on the fly, they drink and bathe while skimming over still water.
Although these birds remain common breeders In Maine, they have experienced tremendous declines in recent decades, according to noted New England ornithologist Peter D. Vickery. This is part of an overall decline in North America of swallows and most other air-hunting insectivores, he reports in Birds of Maine (2020). (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on June 19 and 21, 2022.)