{"id":33660,"date":"2015-08-25T06:15:06","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T12:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=33660"},"modified":"2015-08-27T12:07:52","modified_gmt":"2015-08-27T18:07:52","slug":"why-parent-barn-swallows-stuff-food-so-far-down-throats-of-their-offspring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/25\/why-parent-barn-swallows-stuff-food-so-far-down-throats-of-their-offspring\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Parent Barn Swallows Stuff Food So Far Down Throats Of Their Offspring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adult Barn Swallows stuff insects so far down the throats of their youngsters that it can almost look like the young birds are trying to swallow the head of their parent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Six days ago at Bear River MBR\u00a0I photographed this fledgling Barn Swallow as it was being fed by its parents. Here it’s in a begging posture as it sees one of the adults approaching in the air. For some reason it was never fed while it was on this perch but as soon as it moved to another perch (following photos) the adults brought food to it repeatedly.<\/p>\n

A variety of things can go wrong during the food transfer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This adult has included debris, a small twig, with the insect meal. This little mishap surprised me because I have to wonder how the adult picked up the twig if it (presumably) caught the insect in the air. I didn’t see (or photograph) how the younger bird dealt with the\u00a0twig in its mouth.<\/p>\n

Note: Sharp-eyed reader Christopher, in a comment below, pointed out that this is actually not a twig in the mouth of the fledgling – it’s the abdomen of a damselfly. If you squint you can actually see some of the wing of the insect between its abdomen and the lower mandible of the adult swallow.\u00a0 Thank you, Christopher!<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

But another thing that can go wrong during the transfer is the loss of the insect meal (as I documented with this image in a post a few days ago). Because of the clumsiness and inexperience of the fledgling, the possibility that the insect may still be alive\u00a0and the fact that the transfer takes place while the adult is in flight I suspect this potential loss of the meal\u00a0must be\u00a0a significant problem.<\/p>\n

Here the insect is dropping to the ground between the two birds as the adult on the right begins to fly off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

A variety of strategies are employed to prevent this food loss from happening. One of them is the instinct of the adult to place the insect deep down in the throat of the youngster.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Time and again I photographed the adult with its head buried about a third\u00a0of the way inside the wide open mouth of the\u00a0fledgling. It seems logical that the further down the throat the food is placed the less likely it is to be lost by the clumsy youngster.<\/p>\n

But there are other strategies designed to prevent\u00a0food loss\u00a0from happening.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The wide-open gape of a begging fledgling is a huge target that would be less easily missed due to its size. And the interior mouth lining of many baby birds is brightly colored (red in some species) so the target is also highly\u00a0conspicuous.<\/p>\n

And check out those backward-pointing, sharp projections on the back of the roof of the mouth. Once the meal is that far back (where it is usually placed by the adult) it would have a very\u00a0difficult time going the “wrong way”, even if the insect meal was still alive and struggling. (I tried to look up the name for those projections but struck out…)<\/p>\n

I’m sure there’s nothing new here for many of my readers (rehabbers especially) but I thought it was interesting to see both the behaviors and some of the adaptations up close in wild birds.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adult Barn Swallows stuff insects so far down the throats of their youngsters that it can almost look like the young birds are trying to swallow the head of their parent.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1321,338,334,392],"tags":[431,49,1555,136,146,1486,2633,2640],"class_list":["post-33660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barn-swallows","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-barn-swallow","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-begging","tag-feeding","tag-flight","tag-gape","tag-hirundo-rustica","tag-sharp-projections-in-mouth"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/barn-swallow-0393-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8KU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131718,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33660\/revisions\/131718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}