Join BirdNote tomorrow, November 30th!
Illustrator David Sibley and actor H. Jon Benjamin will face off in the bird illustration battle of the century during BirdNote's Year-end Celebration and Auction!
How do they do this?!? All day long these Tree Swallow parents flew back and forth to their nest hole feeding hungry babies - bug after bug. These acrobatic fliers eat almost any kind of flying insects including flies, bees, beetles, wasps, and butterflies. And that's by no means a complete list. Parents will feed their young until they fledge and can feed themselves.
On this day photographer Greg Thompson caught the action. After taking these photos he noted "Two of the chicks fledged today . . . the adults kept feeding the two chicks left in the nest and flew right by the chicks sitting near the nest begging. The first one to fledge sort of fell out of the nest onto the tree trunk but not too long after that flew about 100 yds with no problem and came back to near the nest hole."
All images © Gregg Thompson