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-DO NOT TOUCH OR OPEN THE BOXES- -DO NOT TOUCH THE BIRDS-
May 25
The nest has been completed and the first egg has appeared! Now, the female will continue laying one egg each day.
May 31
The seventh and last egg was laid on this day, and the female has begun to incubate. She has already lost the feathers on her belly, so she can use the heat of her skin and body to keep the eggs at just the right temperature.
June 13
The chicks have hatched! They have no feathers, and their eyes have yet to open, but they are very hungry nonetheless. The parents will now start taking turns coming into the box to feed the chicks and keep them warm.
The female in this box has just returned from soaring and swooping and performing elegant acrobatics across the fields in search of bugs. Her catch has already been distributed among her seven children, and they've quickly gone back to sleep. They need lots of energy for growing!
June 15
Both of the parents were caught on this day. They had both already banded here at Creamer's Field back in 2020 as adults. This means that they are both at least three years old, which would be around late middle-age for Tree Swallows.
Here is the female, who is on her third year of chick-raising here at Creamer's. She has not been paired up with the male she's nesting with this year, but they have both nested in the same area of the fields each of their years here.
June 24
Today the chicks are 11 days old, and most of their feathers are in the process of growing in. They are beginning to look more and more like their parents, though they won't develop any of the beautiful iridescent blue and green feathering until next year.
Just as young humans go though a lot of clothes as they grow up, Tree Swallows go through a lot of feathers. The feathers they are growing right now are simple and effective, but not very high quality. Only once the chicks are fully grown and developed will they grow their adult plumage
At 11 days, they are old enough to be banded, measured and weighed, and they each now have a new numbered, lightweight metal band on their leg. If one of them returns here to Creamers, or to another Tree Swallow monitoring site in the U.S., we'll know exactly which chick it is, and where it came from.
You can see the yellow 'lips' on either side of their beak - this is called their gape. The bright coloring helps the parents see where to put the bugs they've caught when they enter the box to feed the chicks. All the chicks will open their beaks, and the parents will see each little mouth open, outlined in bright yellow, making it easier for them to get all of their seven hungry chicks fed.
July 2
All of the chicks have successfully left the nest. They are now figuring out how to fly and catch their own food. At the end of the summer they will make the journey south, navigating on their own using light and geomagnetic clues.
In the few days after the chicks are full grown, and before they fledge and leave the nest, the parents stop cleaning out the nest box, so it is quite messy when they leave.
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