Babies on the Way!

I noticed a couple of months ago a bird fest going on outside of my house. They were birds that were not a familiar birds of my hometown of Mobile, Alabama.... although from furthur investigating they are indigent to Alabama. They are called a swallow.

I'm sure only a homeschooling parent or bird lover would ever go into investigating an unfamiliar bird. Off to the internet I went. Seems that there are two differnt kind of swallows; the barn swallow and the cliff swallow.

What was flying crazily around my front porch was the barn swallow...unlike the cliff swallow the barn swallow has a forked tail. They have managed to build a nest on my front porch..at the top of post near the celing. We watched the whole nest building process....amazingly hard work for such a little animal.

As a science project, Summer and I have been tracking their behavior and habits.

From our investigations and internet research the barn swallows are monogomous. The male keeps very close watch over the female and lets her know very loudly when we are sitting on the front porch watching them. She is a very devoted bird though and has pecked at him and let him know who is boss of those eggs....good mama bird!

One day while the birds were out we got our ladder out and took a peek at what was up there. I was amazed at the delicacy of her nest. Notice how intricately she has layed the feathers in the middle....like to make a bed for the babies when they hatch. Though I have never been drawn into the religious dogma, I can not doubt that from my observations of this bird family that there is some kind of universal intellegence that resides within us all.

Here are some pics of the "baby's bed". We are looking forward to their arrival.