Airshow

Do you see the birds in the top left hand corner of my title banner of my blog? These are six barn swallows that hatched out last summer. A couple of years ago a pair of barn swallows built a nest up under the roof of my front porch over the top of a round thermometer. The nest doesn't obstruct much of the thermometer and barn swallows eat a lot of bugs, so I thought it was really neat to have them build there. Plus, I love to watch them fly. Well, the pair didn't come back this year. I don't know how long they live, if something happened to them, but I think we are visited by their offspring. I'm not sure where they're nesting, barn swallows usually live in communities,which made it unusual that we just had the pair by themselves on the porch. I was out cleaning the pool the other day and a whole group of swallows start flying around my yard and swooped down through the porch and around. They then landed on the cable to my phone antenna on the side or the house. The first photo below shows 7 swallows, but when they all finally perched and were still for a while it was only six of them. I wonder if it is the same six that hatched out last year. I'd like to think so.