My late husband, Bob Sundstrom, installed about 50 nest boxes on our property here in Tenino over 20 years. About 40 are specifically for swallows and have metal hole restrictors.
Both Violet Green and Tree Swallows had very good nesting success this year. There were at least 30 active nest boxes.
Last year a pair of American Kestrels moved into a nesting box I provided (misguided, in hindsight), and I watched them pick off many adult swallows, leaving the babies to starve. It was a very sad nest box cleaning task last year. I took down the box, and the kestrel pair moved to my neighbor’s property and were only an occasional visitor this season.
I actively monitor for house sparrows, but even so, missed one male who managed to take over a box and kill 4 teenage Tree Swallows. Bob had a specially designed nest box trap which is very effective and I have continued to use it.
It’s been glorious to see so many swallows hunting the fields again this year. Kudos to you for touting the benefits of hole restrictors. They aren’t absolutely foolproof in my experience, but certainly help!
Good birding
Sally Alhadeff
Tenino, WA
On Jul 22, 2024, at 7:58 AM, Steve Hampton via Tweeters wrote:
Here in Port Townsend, I agree that swallow nesting sites seem quite limited. I wonder about the prevalence of House Sparrows -- many people feed seed (especially white millet) thru the summer, attracting hordes of House Sparrows with seemingly extraordinary reproductive success. It's easy to see groups of 20, most of whom fresh juveniles.
House Sparrows can be quite aggressive in taking over nest cavities and even actively killing chicks of swallows, chickadees, wrens, etc. They nest in birdhouses with too-large holes, or in old houses.
Locally, I'm about to start a "Project 1-1/8th inch" to retrofit birdhouses with hole reducers -- basically thresholds that can be screwed onto the outside of a nest box, reducing the hole diameter to 1-1/8th". This should eliminate House Sparrows, but be suitable for smaller native species. Here's an example of a hole reducer:
good birding,
Hans, I think swallows have disappeared from much of the Seattle urban/suburban area. Barn and Violet-green were all over the city 40-50 years ago. When we moved into our present house in Maple Leaf in 1991, we had Barn, Violet-green and sometimes Tree over the house on a regular basis, also Vaux’s Swifts. Within a decade or so all had disappeared, and our sky was empty of these birds, never to be seen again. As I drove around town, I noticed the same thing. Both Barn and Violet-green had been in most neighborhoods, but not anymore. These two species nested on buildings, on ledges or in holes, and I wondered if there was a movement to tidy up houses that was eliminating their potential nest sites.
But I suspect it has much more to do with the decline of small flying insects over that time, not a thing that is obvious to us, earthbound as we are. We still have a few subsidized colonies of Purple Martins, but they are feeding largely on wasps and bees, which are still around, and dragonflies, which they can find by flying some distance from their nests.
Dennis Paulson
Seattle
Has anyone else noticed that there seem to be less swallows around? We normally have a good number of Violet-green Swallows over the lakes here in Twin Lakes in Federal Way. By this time of the year they have finished breeding and we see more Barn Swallows. Also a couple of pairs of Northern Rough-winged Swallows are present with an occasional Tree Swallow mixed in. Over the last month or longer, I have not seen a swallow of any species on most days. What is up? Are we looking at a decline? How is it in other areas around Puget Sound?
Good Birding!
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-- Steve Hampton
Port Townsend, WA (qatáy)