I put up a Purple Martin House and got a Tree Swallow family. April, the female, arrived April 14, and insisted on my house to her 5 travel buddies. Eventually her mate, Grapes (named after Don Cherry's nickname for Detroit Redwings forward Chris Draper), joined her, after building halfnests in 3 places!

(All pictures taken Summer "El Nino" 1998. Clicking on the thumbnails below will give you full size versions.)

Grapes is shown here on his favorite perch, the clothesline, while April swoops after a stray white feather. I'm leaving the house open for the Purple Martins to see on their way South. Supposedly that's a good plan to get them the next Spring. One Martin swoops with my Tree Swallows already.

The bright colors on his back and white belly led me to slowly realize I didn't have immature martins, but Tree Swallows, a smaller cousin of the Purple Martin. Just as voracious for bugs, their call is ta-cheep! ta-cheep! if you run past the house instead of walking.

Here are the babies in the nest, way in the back. The Grandpa Trio is plenty big for Tree Swallows, even with 5 babies! The round hole was still too small for when the dry spell hit and the competing babies formed a pile three high, resulting in chilled porch rejects! I'll get oval holes next house.

I guessed I had 2 males and 3 females, as two babies had more white on them. The babies were named, in order: Freddie (male named after forward Sergei Federov) and Shannie (female named after forward Brendan Shanahan) -- the two oldest, one of which is pictured here during the dry spell), Ozzie (female named after goalie Chris Osgood) and Kozzie (female named after defenseman Slava Koslov) -- the middle babies, and finally, runt but most loved, Igor (male named after defenseman and Russian-passing teacher, the "Professor," Igor Laryonov).

Although others fell out in the shuffle for food (I watched one day via binoculars), poor Igor found himself on the porch the most (I'd say 5 times), chilled and skin and bones. I would warm him up in my hands and feed him as many as 4 wax worms at a time (usually 3, and they were half as long as he was!). He recognized my voice and was not afraid of me even after his eyes opened. It was a shame that his growth spurt before fledging made even him forget I was his grandma. Their brains must make a whole bunch of new connections before fledging to handle flying, and the babies become spooky, forgetting everyone but their everpresent parents.

It's scary how skinny my little boy got, but he pulled through, and before fledging, he was hard to tell apart from Ozzie and Kozzie! But he was still whiter around the beak.

No Birdy for me? Dusty would try anything to convince me to share my birdies with her.....