Post by Gord on Apr 20, 2007 19:51:56 GMT -8
At my house here in a subdivision I put a swallow box with an oval hole (to help exclude house sparrows) on our house. Over the last week or so there's been up to 5-6 violet-green swallows checking out and fighting over the birdhouse. Not one tree swallow. Now a pair has settled in at it. Not much nest building's taken place yet. It's interesting I dont see tree swallows here, mind you it seems to me that the residential areas seem to attract the violet greens more than tree.
Where I grew up, out in the country, I had a large number of boxes up around the property and neighbor's fields. The ones for swallows would get 100% tree swallow with one exception. I put a house up on the top of our house. For the next...oh geeze, just had a greater yellowleg(s) fly over! I could hear it's "tew-tew" call out the open window! Crazy! It's almost dark! We're close the the Vedder River. Anyway, back to my story. For the next 8 or so years we would have violet-greens nest in this box. I know for about 4 years it was the same pair or at least the same male as he had some deformity in one wing where a primary feather grew funny leaving a small gap.
Out in the parks where I work the only place I get violet-green swallows to nest is in boxes placed on buildings which are near parking lots and, consequently, the highest people activity. These areas also get tree swallows too. The ones out over fields, water and etc go to the tree swallows.
Has anyone else noticed this? Violet-green swallows seem to nest around here in lower numbers as not many are seen unless during migration. But the ones that do seem to nest in specific locations. I dont know, but it might be, a case of competition with the tree swallows. But, on our house for instance, I had three bird houses on it, and two of them had tree swallows in them so they were also willing to nest there too.
I have observed violet-greens successfully protecting a nest box from tree swallows, so the trees are trying.
Curious if anyone else has noticed anything like this.
Where I grew up, out in the country, I had a large number of boxes up around the property and neighbor's fields. The ones for swallows would get 100% tree swallow with one exception. I put a house up on the top of our house. For the next...oh geeze, just had a greater yellowleg(s) fly over! I could hear it's "tew-tew" call out the open window! Crazy! It's almost dark! We're close the the Vedder River. Anyway, back to my story. For the next 8 or so years we would have violet-greens nest in this box. I know for about 4 years it was the same pair or at least the same male as he had some deformity in one wing where a primary feather grew funny leaving a small gap.
Out in the parks where I work the only place I get violet-green swallows to nest is in boxes placed on buildings which are near parking lots and, consequently, the highest people activity. These areas also get tree swallows too. The ones out over fields, water and etc go to the tree swallows.
Has anyone else noticed this? Violet-green swallows seem to nest around here in lower numbers as not many are seen unless during migration. But the ones that do seem to nest in specific locations. I dont know, but it might be, a case of competition with the tree swallows. But, on our house for instance, I had three bird houses on it, and two of them had tree swallows in them so they were also willing to nest there too.
I have observed violet-greens successfully protecting a nest box from tree swallows, so the trees are trying.Curious if anyone else has noticed anything like this.
