{"id":39637,"date":"2016-05-20T06:09:55","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T12:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=39637"},"modified":"2016-05-20T10:15:46","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T16:15:46","slug":"barn-swallows-playin-in-the-mud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/20\/barn-swallows-playin-in-the-mud\/","title":{"rendered":"Barn Swallows Playin’ In The Mud"},"content":{"rendered":"

These swallows taught me some things.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday morning I spent some time with Barn Swallows on Antelope Island as they gathered mud from a puddle for the nests they were building. When they landed in the mud they would sometimes hold both wings up in a fairly dramatic pose. Notice that this bird has its feet wrapped around a pebble in an apparent attempt to avoid getting muddy feet?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

They would often keep their wings up as they gathered mud.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

At times they had much more mud in their bills than this\u00a0but this swallow gave me a nice angle as it alighted on a small “island” in the puddle.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Obviously, this bird was checking its own reflection to see if it had enough mud in its bill to make the flight to its nest worthwhile… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

These swallows were gathering more than just\u00a0mud. They’d pick up different kinds of debris and mix it in with the mud before flying off with it. This bird has a small piece of vegetation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And this one\u00a0has a variety of debris in its bill – including a small feather (I know it was a feather from other images where it was more obvious).\u00a0Many species\u00a0of birds (gulls especially)\u00a0bathe in this long-standing puddle and their activities leave\u00a0many feathers behind.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This also appears to be a feather – whatever it is it’s obviously more than just mud.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes I couldn’t even guess what they had in their bill.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

They could see desirable things in the mud that I couldn’t and reach down to pick them up. Sometimes they discarded them…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

but most often they’d mix them in with more mud before they flew off.<\/p>\n

I’ve never noticed Barn Swallows gathering anything but mud in the past\u00a0so as I watched these birds I came up with one of those half-baked theories that I’m\u00a0(in)famous for. It goes something like this:<\/p>\n

This mud near the shore of the Great Salt Lake is composed largely of a unique kind of sand called oolitic sand. Unlike typical sand composed of angular particles of silica, oolitic sand is composed of concentric layers of calcium carbonate that precipitate out of the lake water around a tiny brine shrimp dropping (usually). The resulting sand grains are egg-shaped (oolite means “egg stone”). There would be very little clay in this kind of\u00a0“mud” to make it\u00a0cohesive when it dried. A mixture of mostly oolitic sand and water would be unstable and crumbly after it dried.<\/p>\n

So, as I was watching these swallows I began to wonder if they were deliberately including all these different kinds of organic\u00a0debris in their construction for the same reason that humans incorporate straw or other organic materials in mud when they’re making adobe bricks – to make\u00a0them stronger and last longer after they dry. Adobe buildings last many, many years when properly\u00a0maintained.<\/p>\n

A little research on Birds of North America Online at least partially confirmed my suspicions.\u00a0According to\u00a0BNA Barn Swallows often mix grass stems with the mud when constructing their nests (though they said nothing about other kinds of organic materials). And these mud Barn Swallow nests can last a\u00a0surprisingly long time – some nests in Nebraska have lasted at least 17 years and eventually became greater than 27″ (70 cm) in depth after having more mud added annually. Pretty impressive!<\/p>\n

So yes, I learned some things from these swallows, both directly and indirectly. And I thank them for it.<\/p>\n

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

These swallows taught me some things.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39640,"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":[3,1321,334,391],"tags":[31,431,2969,2970,2633,238],"class_list":["post-39637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-barn-swallows","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-barn-swallow","tag-building-nests","tag-gathering-mud","tag-hirundo-rustica","tag-oolitic-sand"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/barn-swallow-0870-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-ajj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39637","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=39637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}