I have turned the lights off in the barn that the Swallows chicks are in. Hopefully it will stop them expecting food every time they hear a noise and calm them down. The light now showing the nest is an IR lamp. The light is timed and will go out in about forty minutes. I will try to remember to turn it back on. Later I will put another camera on.
Like most of the country, it has been a miserable, wet, cold and windy day at Denbury, not the sort of day that I want to be out and about on the farm, in fact I have been out very little, other than to feed the Horses and Badgers tonight.
The weather is of course the reason you are not seeing the Swallows chicks being fed. The Swallow and the Birds in that group, prominently catch their food, insects, flying ants, aphids etc, on the wing, across grazing land and ponds and the like. Unfortunately when it is raining constantly, as it has been today, there is very little food about for them to catch. I would hope that the food that they have had over the past days, will be sufficient to keep them going until tomorrow, when we are promised a break in the weather.
Swallows are also known to me as Barn Swallows, because on farms they will mainly nest in old barns and out buildings, very close to cattle and other livestock. They will return to the same nesting sites, and even to the same nests year after year. With farming rapidly changing, lots of buildings that they traditionally use to nest, are disappearing. At Denbury we have converted buildings, so we are not innocent, but we did not realise the impact that it might have on the Swallows, Although I don’t believe it would have made us change direction, if we had of known. Fortunately we have a couple of old stone barns that we have not converted, they now nest in these buildings, we have no plans to convert them. With less livestock farming, mainly dairy, the grazing fields have less flying insects. Although you would not think it on the hot sticky days of the Summer. We are lucky that we have the lake that the Swallows use for a lot for their food, to feed their chicks and themselves.
The Foxes have stopped coming to the Badger feeding area at the feeding time, as the hide is being used some nights by our holiday quests. I saw a couple later on in the night, but by the time they came all the food had gone. The Foxes normally hang around for up to half an hour before I put the feed down. Our quests go to the hide about ten minute before I feed, so the Foxes see them go into the hide, their sense of smell is also very good, so they are more aware of humans being around than the Badgers, who only have to walk a few steps from the sett to eat what food that I put out. Maybe tomorrow night after I feed the Badgers, I will go into the hide with the quests. Foxes cant count, when I leave they may think that there is no one in the hide, as long as they do not smell the scent.
When the hide is being used, the slightest noise will spook the Badgers, and it is that which causes them to race back to the sett. They soon seem to get over it, and return to feed, that could well be that I go up to the area to feed them every night.