Bank Swallows in Surry, NH

I made a quick trip to Surry yesterday to follow up on Lance Tanino's post to the NHBIRD list where he had seen a colony of bank swallows in a sand quarry on Joslin Rd. I had brought my dog along for some exercise. When I first got out of the car, I saw many swallows whirling overhead but none approached the nesting cavities within the bank. Eventually it became clear to me that even though we were a distance away that we were still within their flight distance. We got back into the car from which I had a good view of the bank. After a couple of minute's wait they started dipping in and out of their nests.

I made some photos but it was a bit of a stretch even for my 500 mm telephoto lens.










I had looked for bank swallows before and following a tip by Cliff Seifer. I had gone to an area on the CT River, just downstream from and opposite the Vernon Dam. There was nice bank but no swallows and no nesting cavities. According to Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion on bank swallows "Because of the mercurial nature of Bank Swallow's nesting habitat, established colonies may disappear..." I guess this it what had happened here.

I remember watching bank swallows, called Ufer (=bank) Schwalbe, when growing up in a small village in post-war Germany; I used to wonder how the birds tunneled into a sand bank, but never actually observed them working at it. In middle Europe because of population growth, the swallow has been losing habitat and active breeding colonies are rare. In the States it is classified as a Species of Least Concern.

Poor Little Thing

I had been keeping an eye on a robin's nest below the eaves of our house. I could see movement, could make out 2 or 3 chicks and was watching and waiting for them to fledge, hoping to catch the moment when they left the nest. That was not to be. As I later discovered, the only remaining fledgling was a brown-headed cowbird's offspring. My dog found 2 robin fledglings on the ground, too young and too weak to fly. He brought their dead bodies inside. I found a third one on the ground below the nest. It was still alive, with stubs for wings, almost naked, the soft tissue of its chest fluttering with each breath, few feathers on it's back, a stubby tail and reddish flecked breast feathers. It moved weakly in my hand as I picked it up, lifted its head and opened its yellow beak wide, like the cup of a bright flower. It held it like that for a while but finally closed it again. Its whole wretched being was in my hand, with no future, no parent to feed it, awaiting a slow death by exposure. Poor thing. What was I to do? I could not keep it. But then, then botched it. I smashed it against a rock, but my hand shook so it just grazed the rock. It cried out in pain, terror in its eyes, before I did it again, the proper way and put an end to its poor life. A bizarre thought flashed across my mind, a need to inflict an equal amount of pain on myself, to atone for it, to restore a balance.

P.S. In retrospect, I should have probably tried to get in touch with a local bird rehabilitator.

Great Crested Grebe or do animals share our sense of beauty?

The great crested grebe is the largest of the European grebes. When fancy ladies' hats were in fashion at the end of the 19th century it was almost hunted to extinction, but has made a good recovery and now is fairly common, particularly on weed-rimmed lakes, where it dives for fish.

(Click on photo for larger view)

I find it uncanny that the perception of beauty is not uniquely human, that birds, and in fact many animals from insects and fishes up, share our sense of aesthetics. Look at butterflies, reef fish and, secondarily, even flowers. Perception of what are pleasing colors, patterns, arrangements, seems to be hard-wired into the brain, and frequently the females of the species are the specialists; who judge for example which bird’s of paradise display is the most stunning, or which bower bird's staging the most artistic.

Opposing that is the desire to remain physically unattractive to predators. The color black for instance seems to be associated with poor food value. Crows and ravens, also jackdaws, are rarely hunted and eaten, even in times of dire need and famine. I am speculating that it is the much harsher environmen that makes them compete not on the basis of beauty but by survival skills, who is the smartest, the most cunning ... It would be an interesting subject for a study.