Maximum Occupancy

Day 247: At least one of the Tree Swallow kids fledged yesterday, for a while flying with Mom even as she returned to the House of Chirp to feed the two siblings who remained inside. Frequently, Mom presented an empty beak to the hungry youngster at the door, her way of saying, "If you want lunch, you'll have to fix it yourself." Only when the little ones' cheeping grew insistent would she deliver a bug. This is how it works. I've observed this sequence of behaviour every year of the last thirty. Only once was a fledgling too pudgy to fit through the door. He eventually made it, albeit with a great deal of struggling, and when I took the House down to clean, I enlarged the opening ever so slightly with a rasp. That said, baby swallows are not supposed to return to the nest once they've fledged, and I suppose that technically, Fledge #1 didn't..."technically" being the operative word in this sentence.

Tree Swallow parents continue to feed fledglings on the wing for a few days, but after flying around with Mom for a while, Fledge #1 seemed to think he was getting the short end of the bargain. He decided to roost on the peak of the roof, begging with open mouth as Mom returned. He stayed there for at least an hour, Mom mostly confining her feedings to the two kids still inside. Then it was almost as if a cartoon lightbulb came on over his head: "If you're outside, you don't get fed. If you're inside, you do." When I looked out the window next, there were two heads sticking out of the House of Chirp. Smart little Fledge #1 had popped inside the mother-in-law unit which has never, ever in thirty years had a bird inside it! And there he remained overnight, safe and snug. An hour and a half past dawn this morning, he popped out to fly with Mom as she resumed her efforts to extract the two youngsters still inside the main living space.