Barn Swallow crisis, any suggestions?

[chai]

We have had swallows in our barn every summer for 12 years and this has never happened.

Parents came back to their nest this year and hatched 5 babies. They’ve been feeding them and all has been well for a few weeks, then today I came home from work to find all five babies on the floor of the barn. One was dead, obviously pecked severely around the head and two others were pecked, but were ok.

They are not big enough to fly, but they look to be about two weeks away from that age.

An hour and a half later, I went back out to the barn and the birds had been knocked out of the nest again and one was dead from the fall.

I put them back and sat in the barn for two hours trying to figure out what was going on. There seems to be some kind of squabble going on with some other swallows about the nest, but the parents came back in while I was spying on the nest and started feeding the ones that I put back in.

Has this happened to anyone else’s swallows? I lined the area under the nest with hay in case this happens again, but I’m not sure if I should try to hand raise them if this happens again. I look so forward to the return of the swallows, I am heartbroken by this turn of events. Nature is really cruel.

Thanks if anybody has some suggestions.

[Guin]

English sparrows, crows, starlings.

Poor swallows. :no:

[sk_pacer]

@Guin;5690381

English sparrows, crows, starlings.

Poor swallows. :no:

My thoughts exactly and add blackbirds, grackles and cowbirds to the list

[S1969]

:no::no:
This happens in my barn every year. I really should just keep them from nesting but I don’t know how. It’s quite sad but I don’t feel qualified to hand raise the babies. Once I did rig up a grazing muzzle “nest” and replace the babies (nearly able to fly) in the rafters back in it. Next time I looked they were gone. I never saw them on the floor so I hope they did survive, but who knows.

Sorry I’m no help. Good luck…maybe rigging up something a little harder to be pushed out of will help?

[JER]

Swallows often build nests that, to put in human construction terms, are not exactly up to code. When that happens, especially if the litter is large, it’s hard to keep the babies in the nest.

(I have a barn cat that spares me from the sight of fallen baby birds. I swear she’s there before they hit the ground.)

[chai]

The evil culprit…grrrr

Sparrows. Those evil gangsters. I went to Petco to get some baby bird food and when mr. chai and I got back, there was a sparrow in the barn on the nest. I almost flipped out when I found two more babies dumped out of the nest, one badly pecked.

I love all animals, but I wanted to kill that sparrow. I now have the surviving babies in a box and the dear little Mom keeps flying around it.

Poor babies. I wish there was a way to scare the sparrows away.

[mkevent]

I know Misty Blue put up some kind of hammock under her swallows nests for the babies. Maybe she’ll chime in with her suggestions. I think I recall her setting up a fan for them, too. If I ever come back as a swallow, I’m heading to her barn!!

I agree about the sparrows. They are the kudzu of the bird world.

[fivehorses]

Oh my.
I guess I consider myself very lucky. I started off 20 years ago with a pair of swallows, and then each year more and more came back…I mean to the point where you have to be somewhat careful as the swallows fly in and out of the barn.
Its crazy, they whizzz right by you, and I think, wow, if I just moved over I would have gotten hit.

I just don’t know what I would do if my swallows were under attack. Probably stake out and shoo the intruder away.

Next year I do not plan to be here. I will have someone open the barn so the swallows can nest.
it really is funny how angry they get when they first come back and I keep the barn doors still shut.
They make a sweet but angry protest dive bombing me.
I probably have5 pairs at least now. Actually, probably more.

Sorry OP, I really am. Your post just got me going about my swallows.

[ToTheNines]

Inadvertently, I came up with a pretty good sparrow control method. I set up bluebird nest boxes near the barn. Each is on a pole, which is zip tied to a t-post. The dang sparrows will not let bluebirds nest in them, but they make good decoy nests. Every ten days or so, I cut the zip ties, lower the nest and clean out the nest box. It is very easy to tell the sparrow nests and eggs. I bet I have prevented at least 50 sparrows from hatching this year. The sparrows are distracted enough to leave my purple martins alone, and for the first time in years, I had a successful barn swallow brood.

[chai]

ToTheNines, that is brilliant. We have had the same family of swallows here for twelve years and never a problem. The sparrows have never shown any aggression toward them until today. Mr. chai and I often sit in our hammock and just watch the swallows because they fly with such skill and joy.

Heading out to the barn now to do night check and check on them. I hope they are ok. We put them in a box that we secured to the top of a step ladder in the barn, hoping that the Mom will use that instead of the nest. Once the sparrow knocked them out of the nest, it didn’t continue to attack so perhaps this will work.
If not, I’ll set them up with the bird starter and meal worms I bought at Petco tonight. I hope they will survive. The poor Mom. I am just sick over this. Thanks for all the replies.

[Nicklebee]

I love my sparrows. I’ve had the same family come back every year and use the same nest. I’ve never had any problems with anyone falling out of the nest. The only problem is the poop on the floor in the aisle. They follow me around in the field when I mow and eat the insects I kick up. Very rarely do they fly around when I’m around, they usually sit on the wire and watch me.
They are also considered very good luck, so I’ll keep 'em

[tradewind]

English sparrows would be my guest. I LOATHE them.

[MistyBlue]

Yep, I did set up a hammock under my swallow nest.
Actually, I had to set up two this year. My normally anti-social swallows either changed their minds or it’s a different pair…but this year I have 2 nests. (previous years the pair I had would chase out all other swallows)

And this year the two pairs of swallows have dive bombed and crashed into the English sparrows so often that 90% of them left my barn!

I use one of those cargo nets for an SUV lined with a piece of feed bag under one nest and under the other I just tacked up an old piece of bed sheet lined with a piece of feed bag. (feed bag to catch crap and then throw out) I just attach it from beam to beam under the nest. If you have a barn with a ceiling, you can loop an old sheet and tack it in a swag under a nest. Leaves room for parents to fly in and out.

The hammocks work great! Any baby birds that get knocked out/fall out only drop about 12-18" and are fine and can still be fed. And I don’t have a pile of bird crap on the floor/bedding/horse under the nest.

And I did rig up a fan in the rafters to blow on the nest(s) when the weather gets really hot. Under the roof the temps are a lot higher than lower down. When I see the parents sitting with wings pulled away from the bodies or the babies with beaks left open all the time, it’s too hot for them. So I switch on the fan up there. It’s kinda funny…the parents all settle right in front of it and spread their wings and enjoy the breeze, LOL!

I know it’s probably odd to do that, but I enjoy the heck out of my barn swallows. I love watching them and the decimation of the insect population (well, except for the overzealous one that left luna moth wings on my barn floor last month! That moth is bigger than the birds!) and I even enjoy getting crashed into when the babies are learning to fly. :winkgrin:

And this year with 2 families I’ve been sitting in the barn for ages to watch them. Nest 1 hatched out 5 (and like mentioned, swallow nests aren’t made for 5!) about 9 days before nest 2 hatched. All 5 made it fine until flight, now one is missing when they come back to the barn at night. When nest 1 hatched, the daddy swallow of nest 2 got overexcited about the peeping and kept trying to feed those babies. Parents of nest 1 weren’t amused, LOL! Now nest 1 has been flying about a week and nest 2 (hatched out 4) is about ready to fly. Parents are already trying to coax them off the nest. So far, they’re refusing.
But now at night when nest 1 babies come in to roost, some try landing on nest 2. Nest 2 babies think they’re getting fed by a whole squadron and beg like heck, their parents have a fit and the older babies look confused as to why the nest is so crowded!

sigh So much fun to watch!

[MistyBlue]

PS…I’m not a bird expert at all. Hopefully one will chime in.

But if you want to hand raise the babies they thrive on meal worms. Just use tweezers to pop them down the throats. Keep them in the barn, you can get a bird cage or even a bird house with a small entry hole that the bigger birds can;t get into and their parents may also still feed them.

I’ve noticed that while it’s not hard to feed baby swallows, I really suck at teaching them how to catch bugs in flight. So that part of hand raising is tough. I did it one year for one that hatched late and kept getting knocked out of the nest by the bigger babies. The parents stopped feeding it, the siblings wouldn’t let it eat anyways. I hand fed it meal worms and it grew and did great. But when it started flying it would follow the family in flight trying to learn and the other siblings and parents kept dive bombing it. :no: It eventually learned following as best it could, but it was always odd-bird out. So I think keeping it around the parents and babies and not in the house at first might work better.

[2DogsFarm]

My family of swallows had nested inside my barn for the past 3 years.

I loved watching them hatch & raise their babies - especially the flying lessons

This year they were evicted by the sparrows who replaced the neat mudnest with a really ghetto-looking construction of their own.

I was :mad: until I thought about it a bit & realized:
1 - the swallow community at my place is still intact, just not conveniently located for my easy amusement.
A ton of swallows follows me when I mow so they are nearby - most likely under the eaves of my arena, at the North end as that’s where they seem to swoop.
2 - the sparrows are no longer really interlopers since they’ve been here as long as I can remember.
Sure - once they were invasive, but now they are as native as anything else.
How many generations are required for native status?
And what other bird sticks with us all through Winter?

So, although I miss my Sparrow Show I have to let Nature do as it will.