{"id":13327,"date":"2015-04-20T08:30:36","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T15:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=13327"},"modified":"2015-04-20T18:52:59","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T01:52:59","slug":"swallow-war-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=13327","title":{"rendered":"Swallow war &#038; love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Tree Swallows are here in good\u00a0numbers. They are waging war over\u00a0nesting sites with\u00a0one another and with flickers. In the midst of the battles, some seem to have taken a break to\u00a0mate.<\/p>\n<p>That Tree Swallows are fleet of wing is an understatement. Often this aerial speed and agility is devoted to hawking insects. On this occasion, it was\u00a0devoted to conflict and love.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13352\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/treeswallow150419fs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The term, acrobatic, is sometimes used to describe the manoeuvres of Tree Swallows, but acrobatic falls short of capturing\u00a0the rapidity and agility of their flight.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13332\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/treeswallow150419as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Males are the first to arrive from migration. In this encounter it almost looks as if the female (left) is denouncing the male (right) for not already having secured her a nesting cavity. Or they may be fighting for the same spot.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13331\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/treeswallow150419bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The object of much of the combat\u00a0was a group of pilings in which flickers had carved cavities. There is a cavity in this piling that the Tree Swallows have used other years, but must fight for again.\u00a0<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13328\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/treeswallow150419es.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The fight\u00a0isn&#8217;t just between various\u00a0swallows. Here, a male swallow is making one of many challenges to a female Northern Flicker. She is looking out of the coveted nesting cavity, that, after all, had been\u00a0carved by a flicker. The following morning, the flicker was still ensconced in the cavity.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13329\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/treeswallow150419ds.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In the midst of all the fighting, one couple\u00a0chose to\u00a0make love (the upper bird is the male). After recording this, I wondered, do Tree Swallows\u00a0really mate during flight? A Web search of &#8220;Tree Swallows mating&#8221; only revealed shots where the female was perched&#8212;but then, perched mating would be a vastly easier picture to take.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13333\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/treeswallow150419cs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Tree Swallows are here in good\u00a0numbers. They are waging war over\u00a0nesting sites with\u00a0one another and with flickers. In the midst of the battles, some seem to have taken a break to\u00a0mate. That Tree Swallows are fleet of wing is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=13327\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13327"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13361,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13327\/revisions\/13361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}