meet Mrs. Feather

Mrs. Feather, Violet-green swallow lady, has selected the birdhouse over our deck to raise her family in again this year.

She has been busy nest building for the past few days and has gotten to the "line it with feathers" stage. She is most willing to accept building materials, I got out some white feathers saved from a long ago school project and tossed them in the back yard. After several passes through the yard to investigate, she flashed down, grabbed a feather off the grass and flew straight up about 20 feet. She let the feather go, banked sharply and snatched it out of the air again. This time she had it correctly aligned with the quill end forward, and headed right for the nestbox and added it to her featherbed for the coming eggs.

Her realignment strategy is the same one you notice when an osprey arranges his catch so it is oriented head first, better aerodynamics. I watched her do the same thing several times over the course of just a few minutes. Last summer, she lined her nest with turkey feathers, I will be curious to see if she found some to use again, there are plenty of wild turkeys around to donate to the cause.