Yesterday morning, I went over to my friends Pete & Ginny’s house, to photograph some recently hatched Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica). This is a very enjoyable event, watching the parents swooping into the barn every few minutes to feed the hungry nestlings! You might recall some photos I published earlier in the summer of the some Barn Swallows nestlings, ready to fly from the nest (“Full Nest”).
With summer starting to wind down, this newest batch of hatchlings will be the swallows’ last broods. While there, I saw several nests of young swallows, ranging from the newborns barely covered in down, to nests with young swallows that look ready to fledge any day. But today, I concentrated on the newborns, trying to get some images of the adults feeding the young. Here are a few images I made yesterday.
This was one of the first nests I observed. Note that the young ones appear to be sleeping … and the one on the far right looks ready to fall over any time!
While watching this nest, an adult swooped into the barn and landed a short distance away, with an insect in his mouth:
Then, without notice, the adult flew up to the nest and fed one of the young birds:
Tomorrow, I’ll post a few more of my fave images from this shoot.