Yesterday, my daughter Clare Brown and I were banding hummingbirds at
one of Clare's sites in Winthrop, where there are Tree and Violet-green
Swallows nesting in several boxes. The homeowner scatters duck feathers
for the nesting birds, so the swallows are accustomed to catching the
feathers in the air or picking them up from the ground, and their nests
are lined with them. We watched as one of the Tree Swallows exited the
nest box, pulling a feather behind it. Stuck to the feather was an egg.
The homeowner was just about to go down and see if he could return the
egg to the nest when a swallow, presumably the same bird, swooped down,
picked up the feather with egg attached, and took it back into the box!

I'm not sure exactly what happened. Did the swallow pull the feather
from the nest on purpose, or was it an accident? How was the egg stuck
to the feather? Did the swallow know the egg was stuck to the feather,
and go down to retrieve it, or was it picking up what it thought was
just another feather? Do swallows ever try to retrieve eggs, which are
probably unlikely to fall out of a nest hole anyway? Can a swallow pick
up an egg that isn't stuck to a feather? I thought the whole thing was
pretty strange.

Rachel Lawson
Seattle
rachelwl at msn.com