The Selfish Hours

We have had birdboxes up every year at our place since we moved into this house in 2022. Some years all of the boxes are full, and other years we have only had one or two families take up residence. My favourite tenants are the tree swallows.

If you have ever seen tree swallows before, you know that they are incredibly fun to watch. They eat twice their weight in bugs every day (yay!) They are beautiful with their striking blue and white plummage while they perform acrobatic twists and turns, diving and darting in the air while chasing bugs. They are also incredibly vocal birds, constantly chattering with their bubbly chirps and whines. So when you have a nesting pair take up residence in your yard, they are hard not to notice!

I was thrilled this year to see that a nesting pair had taken up residence in our yard by mid-May. I’ve had so much fun since then, watching mama with her endless nest building trips, then how it was clear she had laid her eggs because she never left the box, and then knowing the babies had hatched when seeing mama and papa going all out all day long, constantly flying back and forth to keep all of the babies fed and hearing all of the chatter when mama or poppa came back to the box with some food.

I knew that in years past, the babies pretty much are fledged and gone by early July, so I knew that the time was coming soon. Monday night I walked past the nesting box and saw a little face looking back at me. One of the babies had its head poking out of the hole, checking out the world while waiting for supper. I’ve watched enough seasons of these boxes to know exactly what this means. When they are big and brave enough to sit up in the entrance like that they are close to leaving the nest for good. A day, maybe two, and they’ll be gone.

I meant to grab my phone. I told myself I’d get a picture of that little face before I went back inside. I said a few words to that baby, told him how beautiful he was and how I hoped he would come back to our yard next year. But then I got wrapped up with doing something else in the garden and I forgot to get my phone to take that photo. When I came back home after work on Tuesday, the nest was empty.

I know its a good thing. A successful fledge is exactly what you hope for when you put a box up in the first place. It means the eggs hatched, the babies grew, the parents fed them enough times a day that I lost count, and everyone made it out. I’m genuinely happy for that whole little family.

But I’m a little sad for me. The yard is so quiet now, and its caught me off guard more than once this week. I didn’t realize how much their presence meant to me. The parents swooping in and out, the noise, the motion, until it just wasn’t there anymore. I keep glancing at the box out of habit and see that empty hole where for so many weeks a face used to be.

Both things are true at once, I think. I’m glad for them, but sad for me.

I don’t have a photo of that last little face, the one I meant to capture but didn’t. Instead, here’s the box now. Empty hole, no one home. And a picture of last year’s mama, since I do have a picture of that.

Adult tree swallows have a high rate of site fidelity, meaning that they are fiercely loyal to established breeding grounds and successful breeding females will usually return to their successful nesting sites, often returning to the same nesting box year after year. So I’m hopeful the same pair will come back to this box next year. In the meantime, there are still lots of things to notice. The garden with its bees and dragonflies is still blooming, the hummingbirds are still fliting about the yard claiming their territory, and the crows will be by for peanuts in the morning like always.

The yard doesn’t stay quiet for long around here.