The last four photos in today’s post, the ones taken yesterday, are soft to varying degrees. I cringe on those rare occasions when I post soft shots but in my view the documentation of this behavior deserves to be seen, soft photos or not.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cliff-swallow-5808-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"cliff-swallow-5808-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
In the last twelve years or so I’ve taken many thousands of photos of Cliff Swallows collecting mud for their nests. In the past it’s always been mud, pure unadulterated mud just like we see here.<\/p>\n
The thickness and the color of the mud may vary a little but its composition, varying amounts of clay, sand and silt, appears to be fairly consistent. Cliff Swallows are actually thought to assess the composition of the mud they collect for their nests – if given a choice they’ll choose the mud type that adheres best to their nest. They’re picky about their mud.<\/p>\n
Barn Swallows are known to mix grass\/vegetation with mud when building their nests but Cliff Swallows are not. Cornell’s Birds of the World says this on the subject of Cliff Swallow nest building material – \u201cgrass is not mixed into mud, as in Barn Swallow nests.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>Dan Gleason, a regular contributor to Feathered Photography who taught ornithology at the university level for decades says that he’s “never seen” Cliff Swallows using vegetation for constructing their mud nests.<\/p>\nIt’s true that Cliff Swallows use dry grass to line the interior of their nest after it has been built and has dried out but they’re not known to use it to actually construct their mud nest.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cliff-swaallow-5823-big-crop-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"cliff-swaallow-5823-big-crop-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
But a week ago today along a mountain streambank I photographed this Cliff Swallow gathering vegetation instead of mud for its nest.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cliff-swaallow-5844-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"cliff-swaallow-5844-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
It’s not like ‘she’ picked it up by mistake – there was too much of it and she actually flew off with it to the nest she was building. I was flabbergasted so a few days ago I posted the photos above and described what I witnessed. No one else who commented on that post had ever seen the behavior either.<\/p>\n
I thought it was a once in a lifetime event – something I’d never see again. I was wrong.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cliff-swallow-7058-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"cliff-swallow-7058-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
Yesterday morning Cliff Swallows were still gathering mud at the same spot along the creek bank. As usual all of the other swallows were gathering mud but this one picked up what appeared to be algae that had been growing off the driftwood when the water had been higher.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cliff-swallow-7060b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"cliff-swallow-7060b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
‘She’ lifted off with the obvious intention of delivering the muddy mass of algae to her nest under construction but she hit a snag. She didn’t realize that the algae\/vegetation was still attached to the driftwood so…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cliff-swallow-7061b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"cliff-swallow-7061b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
her head was violently snapped back when she reached the end of her tether.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cliff-swallow-7062-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"cliff-swallow-7062-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
But the algae broke under the tension so she was able to to retain a small portion of it as she flew off to her nest.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I have no idea why I’d witness such an unusual (unheard of?) behavior twice within a week at the same spot along the same stream. Some thoughts that go through my mind include the following possibilities:<\/p>\n
\n- the behavior isn’t as unusual as the scientific literature and others suggest<\/li>\n
- could it have been the same swallow both times and it’s just a quirky bird for some reason?<\/li>\n
- like physical traits many behaviors are genetically controlled (instincts) and like all genetically controlled traits they have variations. Variation is the fuel of evolution so perhaps this unusual behavior simply represents one of the extremes on the bell curve of nest building behavior.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I dunno, but at this point I’m thinking that I should at least attempt to report this behavior to an authority on Cliff Swallows as Dan Gleason suggested when I published my first post on the subject. I know from experience that that process can be endlessly frustrating but perhaps in this case it needs to be done.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They say that lightning doesn’t strike twice but I’m beginning to wonder.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86170,"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":[5,334,1714,391],"tags":[542,5179,544,5178,5180,311],"class_list":["post-86159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-cliff-swallows","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-cliff-swallow","tag-composition-of-mud-for-nest","tag-petrochelidon-pyrrhonota","tag-unusual-nest-building-behavior","tag-using-grass-vegetation-algae-for-nest-building","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/cliff-swallow-7061b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mpF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86159","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=86159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}